Prevalence of Fragile Histidine Triad Expression in Tumors from Saudi Arabia: A Tissue Microarray Analysis

• Published in: Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention biomarkers & prevention, 2006-09, Vol.15 (9), p.1708-1718
• Main Authors: BAVI, Prashant, JEHAN, Zeenath, UDDIN, Shahab, AL-KURAYA, Khawla, ATIZADO, Valerie, AL-DOSSARI, Hassan, AL-DAYEL, Fouad, TULBAH, Asmah, AMR, Samir S, SHEIKH, Salwa S, EZZAT, Adnan, EL-SOLH, Hassan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acid Anhydride Hydrolases - analysis; Acid Anhydride Hydrolases - genetics; Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Biological and medical sciences; carcinomas; Child; Child, Preschool; Epidemiology; Female; FHIT; Genes, Tumor Suppressor; Hematologic and hematopoietic diseases; Humans; Immunohistochemistry; Infant; Infant, Newborn; Leukemias. Malignant lymphomas. Malignant reticulosis. Myelofibrosis; lymphomas; Male; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Neoplasm Proteins - analysis; Neoplasm Proteins - genetics; Neoplasms - genetics; Neoplasms - pathology; Tissue Array Analysis - methods; tissue microarray; Tropical medicine; Tumors
• ISSN: 1055-9965; 1538-7755
• DOI: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-05-0972

Aim: The fragile histidine triad ( FHIT ) gene was discovered and proposed as a tumor suppressor gene for most human cancers. It encodes the most active common human chromosomal fragile region, FRA3B. We studied the prevalence of loss of FHIT expression in various tumors and correlated its loss with various clinicopathologic features. Methods: To determine whether the absence of FHIT expression correlates with clinical variables such as grade, stage, and survival time, we assessed FHIT expression using immunohistochemistry. More than 1,800 tumors from more than 75 tumor categories were analyzed by immunohistochemistry in a tissue microarray format. Results: Loss of FHIT expression ranged from 19% in ovarian tumors to 67% in lung cancers. Clinical and pathologic features like grade, stage, tumor size, and lymph node metastasis showed correlation with loss of FHIT expression in some tumors. No difference was seen in the survival patterns and loss of FHIT expression in any of the tumor groups studied. Conclusions: Loss of FHIT expression is an ubiquitous event in the multistep, multifactorial carcinogenesis process. FHIT may be altered at different stages in different types of cancers. Most of the tumors with a wider prevalence of loss of FHIT expression as an early event show a correlation with clinicopathologic features. However, in some of the tumors, FHIT expression is lost as a late event and is only seen in a fraction of the tumors. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2006;15(9):1708–18)