Immunohistochemical Detection of Progesterone Receptor in Ovarian Tumors Among Sudanese Women

Abstract

This is analytical retrospective hospital based case study was conducted at Alamel hospitals and Altayseer-2 laboratory in Khartoum state, during the period from March 2018 to September 2018. The study aimed to detect progesterone receptor expression in ovarian tumors using immunohistochemistry. Forty-nine paraffin blocks were collected from patient samples previously diagnosed as ovarian tumors, 32 (65.3%) were malignant and 17 (34.7%) were benign. The paraffin blocks were cut by rotary microtome, then stained by immunohistochemical method (new indirect technique). The data obtained was analyzed using SPSS program version 16. The age of patients ranged between 28 and 70 with mean age of 49 years. Patients with malignant ovarian tumor and equal or less than 50 years representing 14 (28.6%) and the remaining 18 (36.7%) were older than 50 years, while Patients with benign ovarian tumor and equal or less than 50 years representing 13 (26.5%) and the remaining 4 (8.2%) were older than 50 years. Malignant ovarian tumor tended to occur more in women older than 50 years. The majority of malignant ovarian tumor were epithelial tumors representing 22 (44.9%) followed by sex cord tumors 9 (18.4%) and germ cell tumor 1 (2%), the study also included 17 (34.7%) benign ovarian tumors. The tumor grade among malignant tumor samples revealed 12 (37.5%) grade I, 10 (31.2%) of both grade II and grade III. Malignant tumors revealed positive PR expression was in 1/32 (2%) sample and negative expression in 31/32 (63.3%) samples, while in benign ovarian tumors positive expression was founded in 5/17 (10.2%) samples and 12/17 (24.5%) samples showed negative expression, this result showed significant association between PR expression and histopathological diagnosis (P. value = 0.008). The study concluded that positive expression of PR was more in benign tumors compared with malignant tumors of the ovary.