Expression of histoblood group antigens in bronchial squamous metaplasia

¹ Gregorio Marañón General University General Hospital; and LABIEMET. Universidad de Los Andes. Venezuela
² Gregorio Marañón General University General Hospital
³ La Raza National Medical Centre Speciality Hospital

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: histonora{at}yahoo.es.

	Abstract

The aim of this study is to evaluate the expression of blood group antigens in squamous bronchial metaplasia to determine if it could identify patients at risk for lung cancer.

100 bronchial biopsies were included in this study. The cases were classified according to the WHO grading system. Immunohistochemical stains for histoblood group A, B, p53 and Ki67 were performed.

56 patients (56%) belong to blood A group. Among them 6 patients (10.7%) did not express antigen in squamous metaplasia. Three of them showed carcinoma at the moment of the biopsy and the other three developed synchronous lung carcinoma. 9 patients (9%) belong to B blood group. Loss of antigenic expression was observed in 5 cases. All of them developed synchronous lung carcinoma. The patients with low-grade dysplasia and high-grade dysplasia developed lung cancer in 71% and 100% respectively.

Our findings suggest that the loss of histoblood antigens expression is a event in carcinogenesis of bronchial mucosa and is usually associated to high grade lesions and hyperproliferative activity.