Clinical significance of HLA-DR antigen expression in lung carcinomas

Objective To investigate the expression of HLA-DR in lung carcinomas and its clinical significance . Methods Paraffin embedded tissues from 57 cases of primary lung carcinomas were studied for expression of HLA-DR by immunohistchemistry(ABC method) .The relationship between HLA-DR expression and clinical pathology of lung carcinomas was analyzed. Results Positive rate of HLA-DR expression in adenocarcinoma, squa-mous cell carcinoma and large cell un-differentiated carcinoma was 72.0%,42. 1% and 28.6 %, respectively. There was no expression of HLA-DR in 6 cases of SCLC and 20 cases of normal lung cells immediately adjacent to lung carcinomas. The positive rate of HLA-DR expression in adenocarcinoma was significantly higher than that in squamous cell carcinoma and larg cell un-differentiated carcinoma( P 0.05) .The positive rate of HLA-DR expression gradually decreased with tumor progression. There was a distinct statistical difference in positive rate between stage Ⅰ and stageⅡ + stageⅢ ( P 0.05) .HLA-DR expression in well differentiated carcinomas was significantly higher than that in moderately and poorly differentiated ones( P 0.01). Primary lung carcinoma with lymph node metastasis did not show higher expression of HLA-DR than lung carcinoma without lymph node metasta-sis( P 0.005). Conclusion Expression of HLA-DR might play a role in the genesis and development of lung carcinoma and can be used for judging its biological behavior.