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Proliferation and apoptosis in primary gastric B‐cell non‐Hodgkin's lymphoma
Author(s) -
GISBERTZ I.A.M.,
SCHOUTEN H.C.,
BOT F.J.,
ARENDS JW.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
histopathology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.626
H-Index - 124
eISSN - 1365-2559
pISSN - 0309-0167
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2559.1997.d01-573.x
Subject(s) - apoptosis , cell growth , lymphoma , terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase , cell , biology , proliferation index , cancer research , b cell , large cell , pathology , tunel assay , immunology , cancer , medicine , antibody , adenocarcinoma , biochemistry , genetics
To elucidate the role of cell turnover in primary gastric B‐cell non‐Hodgkin's lymphomas we studied tissue samples of 72 patients—26 small cell (25 MALT lymphomas) and 46 large cell (31 MALT lymphomas). Proliferation indices and apoptotic indices were measured by Mib‐1 expression and terminal deoxynucleotidyl‐transferase (TdT)‐mediated nick end labelling, respectively. Furthermore, expression of the apoptosis related gene‐products bcl‐2 and p53 was studied. Large cell lymphomas showed significantly higher proliferation indices (59.1% vs. 15.4%) and apoptotic indices (3.2% vs. 0.7%) than small cell lymphomas. Proliferation and apoptotic indices were positively correlated ( r =0.371, P =0.03). Expression of the bcl‐2 protein was significantly higher in the small cell lymphomas. Furthermore, cases with a high bcl‐2 expression showed both a significantly decreased proliferation ( P <0.0001) and apoptotic index ( P =0.0096) compared to bcl‐2 negative cases. Expression of the mutant p53 protein was present in 8.0% of small cell and in 18.2% of large cell lymphomas. p53 positive cases showed significantly higher proliferation indices, but showed no correlation with apoptotic index. These data suggest that impaired apoptosis by bcl‐2 may be more prominent than proliferation in the genesis of small cell lymphomas, whereas a high cell turnover characterizes large cell primary gastric lymphomas.