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| LETTER TO THE EDITOR |
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| Year : 2012 | Volume
: 5
| Issue : 2 | Page : 136-137 |
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An immunohistochemical analysis of P-glycoprotein in retinoblastoma
Sumita Sethi1, Parul Saxena2, Seema Kashyap3, Neelam Pushker1, Jasbir Kaur2, Supriyo Ghose1
1 Oculoplastic and Pediatric Ophthalmology Services, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India
2 Department of Ocular Biochemistry, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India
3 Department of Ocular Pathology, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India
| Date of Web Publication | 4-Aug-2012 |
Correspondence Address:
Seema Kashyap
Department of Ocular Pathology, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/0974-620X.99386
How to cite this article:
Sethi S, Saxena P, Kashyap S, Pushker N, Kaur J, Ghose S. An immunohistochemical analysis of P-glycoprotein in retinoblastoma. Oman J Ophthalmol 2012;5:136-7 |
How to cite this URL:
Sethi S, Saxena P, Kashyap S, Pushker N, Kaur J, Ghose S. An immunohistochemical analysis of P-glycoprotein in retinoblastoma. Oman J Ophthalmol [serial online] 2012 [cited 2021 May 18];5:136-7. Available from: https://www.ojoonline.org/text.asp?2012/5/2/136/99386 |
Sir,
Retinoblastoma is the most frequent primary intraocular malignancy in children. [1] Even with the use of multidrug chemotherapy regimens, drug resistance is a major problem while managing this vulnerable group of patients. Multidrug resistance (MDR), associated with expression of P-glycoprotein (P-gp), is one of the most known mechanisms of chemoresistance. [2],[3] P-gp is a 170-kDa plasma membrane glycoprotein, which is known to cause an increased efflux of cytotoxic drugs from the cell. In other systemic malignancies, overexpression of P-gp has been associated with chemoresistance and poor prognosis. [2] We analyzed P-gp expression in retinoblastoma specimens enucleated either primarily or after neoadjuvant chemotherapy by immunohistochemistry and correlated this with the histopathological findings.
All eyes enucleated over a 1-year period from January 2010 to December 2010; enucleated either as a primary treatment (group I) or after three to five cycles of standard regimen vincristine, etoposide, and carboplatin (group II) were included in the study. Formalin fixed, paraffin-embedded sections from the enucleated sections were stained with hematoxylin and eosin for studying histopathological features (tumor differentiation and high-risk features). P-gp immunostaining was done and analyzed semiquantitatively as negative, low, or high expression [Figure 1]. Fischer's exact and chi-square tests were used for statistical analysis. Statistical significance was set at a P-value of less than 0.05.
There were a total of 49 eyes, 37 in group I (mean age 2.48 ± 1.27 years) and 12 in group II (mean age 3.21 ± 1.34); histopathological findings of both the groups are summarized in [Table 1]. In group I, there were 27% (10 of 37) eyes with positive P-gp expression, of which 5.4% (2 of 37) were high expressions. In group II, among 58.3% (7 of 12) positive cases, P-gp was highly expressed in 41.7% (5 of 12). The difference in the P-gp expression in the two groups was statistically significant (P = 0.0042). Among the well differentiated (WD) tumors (4 of 49), 50% (2 of 4) had high expression and among the well differentiated (PD) tumors (45 of 49), 11.1% (5 of 45) had a high P-gp expression. There was no statistically significant difference with P-gp expression in relation to tumor differentiation, laterality, and presence of high-risk histopathological features.
From India, there has been one other study in which Krishnakumar et al. analyzed P-gp expression by imunohistochemistry prior to chemotherapy and studied the long-term follow-up. [4] In our study we found that 58.3% (7 of 12) retinoblastoma cases enucleated after chemotherapy had high expression of P-gp as compared with 27.0% (10 of 37) primarily enucleated cases. This significant difference in P-gp expression indicates that chemotherapy might have selected resistant clones of cells expressing high P-gp.
Though there have been a few studies studying the expression of P-gp in retinoblastoma and its relation to drug resistance, these were retrospective studies and the practical implication have not yet been well considered. [4],[5],[6] However, the high P-gp expression in chemotreated eyes in our study and in few other studies support that chemotherapy may have some role in high expression of P-gp in retinoblastoma. These findings could have important implications in understanding the mechanism of chemoresistance in retinoblastoma patients, and warrant further prospective investigation in a larger patient population.
 References | |  |
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| 3. | Chan HS, Thorner PS, Haddad G, Gallie BL. Multidrug-resistant phenotype in retinoblastoma correlates with P-glycoprotein expression. Ophthalmology 1991;98:1425-31.
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| 4. | Krishnakumar S, Mallikarjuna K, Desai N, Muthialu A, Venkatesan N, Sundaram A, et al. Multidrug resistant proteins: P-glycoprotein and lung resistance protein expression in retinoblastoma. Br J Ophthalmol 2004;88:1521-6.
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| 5. | Filho JP, Correa ZM, Odashiro AN, Coutinho AB, Martins MC, Erwenne CM, et al. Histopathological features and P-glycoprotein expression in retinoblastoma. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci 2005;46:3478-83.
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| 6. | Souza Filho JP, Martins MC, Caissie AL, Torres VL, Fernandes LH, Erwenne CM, et al. Relationship between histopathological features of chemotherapy treated retinoblastoma and P-glycoprotein expression. Clin Experiment Ophthalmol 2005;33:279-84.
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[Figure 1]
[Table 1]
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