Clinicopathological significance of tumor cyclin D1 expression in oral cancer.

Highlights • Cyclin D1 overexpression was found in 28.7% of the cases of OSCC. • Cyclin D1 overexpression is associated with poor clinicopathological factors classically associated with a poor prognosis. • Measurement of cyclin D1 expression may be useful to predict the prognosis of patients with OSCC. Abstract Objective To evaluate the association of cyclin D1 overexpression with clinicopathological parameters classically considered of prognostic value in OSCC (T, N, M, clinical stage, degree of differentiation, invasive morphology and, cellular proliferation index). Design A retrospective immunohistochemical study was conducted of cyclin D1 and ki-67 expression in 68 OSCCs from 54 patients. Cases were scanned using a digital pathology system. The tumor expression of markers was assessed in four randomly selected fields (40x), and a semi-automatized count was conducted of cyclin D1-positive and -negative cells. Results Cyclin D1 overexpression was found in 28.7% of the cases of OSCC. It was significantly and positively associated with the following clinicopathological parameters: low tumor differentiation degree (p = 0.030), invasive morphology (p = 0.045), and proliferative phenotype according to tumor cell ki-67 expression (p = 0.018). Conclusions Cyclin D1 overexpression is an event of oral carcinogenesis associated with clinicopathological parameters classically associated with a poor prognosis in patients with OSCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]