Expression of Cytokeratin-19 and Galectin-3 in Tissues from Patients with Benign and Malign Thyroid Lesions

Objective To study the expression of cytokeratin-19 and Galectin-3 in tissues from benign and malignant thyroid lesions and to evaluate its usefulness in the differential diagnoses.Methods The expression of CK-19 and Galectin-3 mRNA in tissues from thyroid carcinoma,adenoma and paraneoplastic tissues was detected by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction.Immunohistochemical analysis was also performed to detect the expression of the CK-19 and Galectin-3 protein in the same samples.Results Both CK-19 and Galectin-3 mRNA were highly expressed the in tissues from the thyroid carcinoma adenoma and paraneoplastic tissue(P0.001),but there expression was not correlated with the clinicopathologic parameters.There was no significant difference between the expression of Galectin-3 mRNA and the different types of thyroid carcinoma.The expression of CK-19 was significantly higher in papillary thyroid carcinoma than that in follicular and medullary thyroid carcinoma.Immunohistochemical studies showed that both CK-19 and Galectin-3 protein were positively expressed in most of the thyroid carcinoma tissues.The expression of CK-19 and Galectin-3 protein was negative in most of the paraneoplastic tissues,and it was negative in almost all the benign lesions.Conclusion The expression of CK-19 and Galectin-3 was up-regulated in thyroid carcinoma.It might be helpful in the diagnosis of thyroid lesions by the combined analyses of the expression of the two markers.