Expression of Fas,FasL and Caspase-8 in Cervical Carcinoma and its Clinical Significance

Objective To investigate the expression of Fas,Fas ligand,caspase-8 and its clinical significance in cervical carcinoma and explore the effect of Fas system in the mechanism of tumor immune evasion.Methods Immunohistochemical method was used to detect the expression of Fas,FasL and caspase-8 in 52 samples of cervical carcinoma,18 samples of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia(CIN),10 samples of chronic cervicitis and 10 samples of normal cervical tissues.Results The expression of Fas and FasL were significantly different between cervical carcinoma and chronic cervicitis tissues or normal cervix(P0.05,P0.01),The expression of Fas and FasL were significantly higher in squamous cell carcinoma than in adenocarcinoma(P0.05,P0.01).There was a significant correlation between the expression of Fas,FasL and histologic grades(P0.01).The more poorly the tumor was differentiated,the higher the expression rate of FasL was and the lower the expression rate of Fas was.The expression of FasL increased in tumor with lymphnode metastases compared with tumor without(P0.01).There was no significant relationship between the expression of Fas,FasL and the age of patient or the clinical staging.The expression of Fas and FasL in TIL around cervical carcinoma was higher than that in CIN(P0.01).There was no correlation between caspase-8 expression and histological type,age of patient or clinical staging.Caspase-8 expression rate was lower in cervical carcinoma than in chronic cervicitis tissues and normal cervix(P0.01).The expression of caspase-8 in cervical carcinoma was lower in tumor with lymph node metastases than in tumor without.The expression of caspase-8 was higher,though insignificantly,in highly differentiated tissue than in lowly differentiated tissue.Conclusion The low expression of Fas and caspase-8 and high expression of FasL may contribute to the carcinogenesis and development of cervical carcinoma by evading the host immune surveillance.