HISTOPATHOLOGICAL AND CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF P53 IN PANCREAS ADENOCARCINOMA

Pancreas adenocarcinoma is one of the most mortal cancers and tumor stage, histological grade and tumor size are the major factors related to prognosis. New prognostic factors are subjects of research for this cancer. p53 is a tumor supressor gene which is found as the most common mutated gene in human cancers. In this study, the frequency of immunohistochemical p53 positivity and its relation to prognosis were investigated in pancreas adenocarcinoma cases. Nineteen patients (11 male, 8 female) with histopathologically diagnosed as pancreas adenocarcinoma were included in this study. Positive immunohistochemical staining for p53 was detected in 10 (%53) of the cases. The relationship between stage at the time of diagnosis and p53 staining was not significant. We observed similar p53 positive staining in both early and late tumor stages and concluded that though the number of the study population was too small, p53 staining was not related to tumor stage. In the survival analysis p53 positive cases survived shorter than the negative cases but this difference was not statistically significant. Further larger scaled similar studies should be done to investigate the relationship between both p53 and the other new parameters with prognosis.