Expression of Cornulin in Oral Premalignant Lesions

Publication date: Available online 13 February 2019

Source: Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology and Oral Radiology

Author(s): Neetha Santosh, Kristin K. McNamara, F. Michael Beck, John R. Kalmar

Abstract

Objective

To evaluate expression of cornulin in oral mucosa as an adjunct to histopathologic grading of oral epithelial dysplasia (OED).

Study design

Biomarker expression was assessed in normal oral mucosa (NOM), low-grade (LD) and high-grade (HD) OED and oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) using immunohistochemistry (IHC). Photomicrographs were evaluated with Aperio Imagescope using the positive-pixel-counting algorithm. A histo-score (H-score) was calculated based on the staining intensity and the percentage of positive cells. Intra-rater reliability for H-score and %-staining was determined by calculating interclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). Mean differences in H-scores and %-staining values were each analyzed using an analysis of variance and Tukey post hoc procedure.

Results

Cornulin expression progressively diminished with increasing grades of dysplasia and OSCC. ICCs for H-score and %-staining were each >0.99. Except for OSCC vs HD, all other pairwise comparisons were statistically significant (P<0.0001) for H-score and %-staining.

Conclusion

Cornulin expression differentiated between low-grade and high-grade oral epithelial dysplasia, making it a potential adjunct for grading oral OEDs and a potential biomarker for risk of lesion progression. Longitudinal studies evaluating risk stratification based on cornulin expression may be warranted.

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