Clinicopathological significance of tumor cyclin D1 expression in oral cancer.

OBJECTIVE:To evaluate the association of cyclin D1 overexpression with clinicopathological parameters classically considered of prognostic value in OSCC (T, N, M, clinical stage, degree of differentiation, invasive morphology and, cellular proliferation index). DESIGN:A retrospective immunohistochemical study was conducted of cyclin D1 and ki-67 expression in 68 OSCCs from 54 patients. Cases were scanned using a digital pathology system. The tumor expression of markers was assessed in four randomly selected fields (40x), and a semi-automatized count was conducted of cyclin D1-positive and -negative cells. RESULTS:Cyclin D1 overexpression was found in 28.7% of the cases of OSCC. It was significantly and positively associated with the following clinicopathological parameters: low tumor differentiation degree (p = 0.030), invasive morphology (p = 0.045), and proliferative phenotype according to tumor cell ki-67 expression (p = 0.018). CONCLUSIONS:Cyclin D1 overexpression is an event of oral carcinogenesis associated with clinicopathological parameters classically associated with a poor prognosis in patients with OSCC.