Immunohistochemical Detection of Epithelial Membrane Antigen in Thyroid Gland Tumors Among Sudanese Patients

Abstract

This is a hospital based analytical retrospective case control study which was conducted at Omdurman teaching hospital, during the period from January to April 2017. The study was aimed to detect epithelial membrane antigen expression in thyroid tumors using immunohistochemistry. Forty paraffin embeded blocks were collected from patients samples previously diagnosed as thyroid tumors, 30 (75%) were malignant thyroid tumors and 10 (25%) were benign thyroid tumors. One section of 3m from each paraffin block was cut by rotary microtome, then stained by immunohistochemical method (new indirect technique). The data obtained was analysed using SPSS program version 11.5 . The age of patients ranged between 11 and 65 years with mean age of 36 years. Most of patients were less than 50 years representing 31 (77.5%) and the remaining 9(22.5%)were more than 50 years. Epithelial membrane antigen was revealed positive result in 16/30 samples of malignant tumors while 14/30 samples showed negative expression, while all benign thyroid tumors samples 10/10 showed negative expression for epithelial membrane antigen, this result showed significant association between epithelial membrane antigen expression and tumors of thyroid gland (P. value =0.003). Regarding the histopathological subtypes of thyroid malignant tumor, epithelial membrane antigen expression was found positive in 11/30 samples of papillary thyroid carcinoma, 3/30 samples of follicular thyroid carcinoma, 2/30 samples of hurthle carcinoma. This result showed no association between epithelial membrane antigen expression and subtypes of thyroid malignant tumors (P. value =0.076). The study concluded that the expression of epithelial membrane antigen was associated with malignant tumors of thyroid gland with no association with histological subtype of malignant tumors.