Objective: To study the relationship between density, location, proliferation of lymph vessels and clinicopathological features of laryngeal squamous carcinoma.
Method: Tumor lymph vessels were quantitated and located in archival specimens of laryngeal carcinoma by LSAB immunostaining for the recently described lymphatic endothelial marker LYVE-1. The Ki67 proliferation marker was used to evaluate the proliferating conditions of LYVE-1(+) vessels with EnVision immunohistochemical methods.
Result: (1) The density of intratumoral LYVE-1(+) vessels was higher in the cases of neck lymph nodal metastasis group than that of no neck lymph nodal metastasis group (P = 0.000). There was a significant difference of the density of intratumoral LYVE-1(+) vessels in the cases of T1, T2 and T(3-4) group. There was no significant difference of the density of intratumoral LYVE-1(+) vessels between supraglottic group and glottic group, squamous cell histological types I group and types II group (P = 0.125, 0.146, respectively). (2) The density of peritumoral LYVE-1(+) vessels was higher in the cases of neck lymph nodal metastasis group than that of no neck lymph nodal metastasis group. However,there was no statistic significance (P = 0.253). (3) Ki67(+) immunostaining occurs in some of the intratumoral LYVE-1(+) vessels, interestingly, there was no this phenomenon in the peritumoral LYVE-1(+) vessels.
Conclusion: Intratumoral lymph vessel density marked by LYVE-1 in laryngeal carcinoma was significantly correlated with tumor infiltration and metastasis. Our results provide potent evidence that proliferating lymphatics exists in intratumoral areas of laryngeal carcinoma mainly which maybe contribute to lymph node metastasis in some cases.