Afaf T El-Nashar¹* and Esraa M Youssef²

¹Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Sohag, Egypt
²Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Aswan University, Egypt

*Corresponding Author:Afaf T El-Nashar, Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Sohag, Egypt.

Received: March 24, 2025; Published: April 16, 2025

Abstract

Background: Ovarian cancer (OC) is the fifth cause of cancer mortality in females. There were an estimated 300,000 new cases of OC diagnosed worldwide in 2018, corresponding to 3.4% of all cancer cases between women. The high mortality rate of OC attributed to asymptomatic growth of the tumor leads to its diagnosis at advanced stages. About 85–90% of OC are of epithelial including serous, endometrioid, clear cell and mucinous carcinoma.

Aim: To study the immunohistochemical (IHC) expression of FOXA1 and p53 in epithelial OC and its association with prognostic indicators as age, tumor site, stage, grade and histological type.

Materials and Methods: The study included 52 cases with EOC from the pathology department, faculty of medicine, Aswan and Sohag Universities, in the period from January 2017 to December 2019. This study involved 52 patients with OC and a median age 53 years. Different histological types were included as 37 of serous, 12 mucinous, 1 case endometroid 2 cases clear cell OC. The study cases were classified into 22 Grade I, 16 Grade II and 20 Grade III. About 22 cases were at stage I, 9 at stage II, 11 at stage III and 10 at stage IV. Tissue section were stained using IHC technique with FOX A1 at a dilution 1:100 and p53 at 1:100.

Results: A statistically significant correlation was found between FOX A1 expression and advanced patient's age, high grade, advanced stage, ruptured capsule and ascites, regardless of tumor laterality. No significant association was found between p53 immunoexpression and the same clinic-pathological parameters although p53 was associated with serous type.

Conclusion: FOXA1 immunoexpress ion in EOC is considered a poor prognostic factor in EOC. FOXA1 could be a potential therapeutic target and prognostic marker in EOC.

Keywords: Ovarian Cancer; FOX A1; P53; Prognostic Marker; Immunohistochemistry (IHC)

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Citation

Citation: Afaf T El-Nashar and Esraa M Youssef. “Immunohistochemical Expression of Forkhead Box (FOX)A1 and P53 in Epithelial Ovarian Cancer". Acta Scientific Women's Health 7.5 (2025): 15-22.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2025 Afaf T El-Nashar and Esraa M Youssef. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.