Background The behavior of gastrointestinal stromal tumors varies according to tumor size, location, mitotic rate, and rupture. Traditional mitotic counting in 50 high-power fields (HPF; 5.3 mm2) may overestimate progression risk, as 5 mm2 corresponds to 20–25 HPF under modern microscopy. However, the 50-HPF method remains widely used. This study evaluated the impact of two mitotic counting methods on risk classification and developed a prognostic model combining inflammatory biomarkers with clinicopathological factors. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 150 patients who underwent resection at Songklanagarind Hospital between 2009 and 2021. Patients who had received neoadjuvant therapy or had a second primary cancer were excluded. Mitosis was evaluated using both methods. Clinicopathological and serum biomarker data were collected. The primary outcome was 5-year disease-free or progression-free survival. The model was developed using forward stepwise variable selection based on the time-dependent area under the curve and internally validated by bootstrapping. Results: The 50-HPF method overestimated the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology classification in 14.2% of cases. A model incorporating tumor size, location, rupture, mitotic count within 5 mm2, and systemic immune-inflammation index achieved the highest area under the curve of 0.939 in both training and validation sets, outperforming previous models. The 5-mm2 method demonstrated superior performance to the 50-HPF method across all models (0.939 vs. 0.919 for the proposed model). Conclusions: Mitotic counting in 50 HPF overestimated risk classification in certain cases. Incorporating systemic immune-inflammation index and using a 5 mm2 mitotic count enhanced prognostic model performance.
Background Gastric adenocarcinoma is a major cause of cancer mortality worldwide, and reliable biomarkers remain insufficient. This study investigates the immunohistochemical expression of progastrin (hPG) and annexin A2 (ANXA2) and the polarization of tumor-associated macrophages in gastric adenocarcinoma to explore their potential prognostic and biological significance. Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted on formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue samples from 60 patients with gastric adenocarcinoma (primary tumors, lymph node metastases, and non-tumoral gastric mucosa) and gastric biopsies from 23 healthy controls. The expression of hPG and ANXA2 was quantified using the H-score, and the CD163/human leukocyte antigen–DR (HLA-DR) ratio was used to represent macrophage polarization (M2/M1). Statistical analyses included non-parametric tests, Spearman correlations, Kaplan-Meier survival curves, and Cox proportional-hazards models. Results: ANXA2 expression was significantly elevated in cancer cells from primary tumors and lymph node metastases, compared with the non-tumoral gastric mucosa tissues and gastric mucosa tissues from healthy controls. ANXA2 expression increased with the tumor grade. High ANXA2 levels were associated with shorter overall and disease-free survival, but they did not have independent prognostic value. Although hPG expression correlated positively with ANXA2, it showed no significant prognostic association. The CD163/HLA-DR ratio increased with tumor progression and negatively correlated with ANXA2, but it did not influence survival outcomes. Conclusions: This study is the first to demonstrate the adverse prognostic impact of ANXA2 overexpression in gastric adenocarcinoma tissues from Caucasian patients. Our results suggest that ANXA2 might have utility as a prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target, if further large-scale studies validate and expand our findings.
Background Alpha-methylacyl-CoA racemase (AMACR) is the preferred biomarker for distinguishing malignant from benign glands in prostate biopsies, showing high sensitivity and specificity for prostate cancer. A meta-analysis of immunohistochemistry (IHC) for AMACR is essential to further assess its diagnostic accuracy across diverse sample sources. Methods: A systematic search of databases including MEDLINE, ScienceDirect, ProQuest, Google Scholar, and the Cochrane Library was performed, focusing on studies of AMACR to diagnose prostate cancer, particularly in biopsy samples analyzed through IHC over the last 20 years. Quality of studies was assessed using the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies 2 tool, followed by a meta-analysis of regions and subgroups to calculate summary estimates of diagnostic test accuracy. Results: In the final analysis, 37 studies, with a pooled size of 5,898 samples, were included from the examination of 94 full-text papers. Among them, 27 studies with similar sample sources and testing methodologies underwent meta-analysis, yielding a combined sensitivity estimate of 0.90 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.86 to 0.93) and specificity of 0.91 (95% CI, 0.83 to 0.95), both with significant heterogeneity (p < .01). The region beneath the hierarchical summary receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.95 (95% CI, 0.93 to 0.97), positive likelihood ratio was 9.6 (95% CI, 5.3 to 17.4), negative likelihood ratio was 0.11 (95% CI, 0.08 to 0.15), and diagnostic odds ratio was 88 (95% CI, 42 to 181). Conclusions: Our meta-analysis findings substantiate AMACR as a highly accurate tool for diagnosing prostate cancer, specifically in biopsy samples, via immunohistochemical staining. Further studies involving diverse samples are needed to enhance our understanding of the AMACR diagnostic accuracy in a range of clinical settings.
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