Altered β-catenin expression in oral mucosal dysplasia: a comparative study

Abstract

Obective: Thee current study aimed to investigate the B-catenin expression in oral leukoplakia (OL) with different degrees of epithelial dysplasia and normal oral mucosa. aterial and ethods: ormalin ed paraf n em edded tissue samples of OL (mild dysplasia n=19, moderate dysplasia n=13, and severe dysplasia n=7), and 10 normal oral mucosa (control group) were su mitted to immunohistochemical reactions to anti catenin primary anti ody. ualitative catenin analysis was performed ased on the percentage of positive cells. The cellular location and the epithelial layer were also considered. The Chi-square test and the Fisher’s exact test were used to verify possible differences in the -catenin expression among the OL groups. p-value of 0.0 was considered statistically signi cant. esults: embranous expression of -catenin in parabasal and basal layers was gradually lost in the higher degrees of epithelial dysplasia. In normal oral mucosa, -catenin was detected only in the cytoplasmic membrane. owever, a signi cant increase in cytoplasmic -catenin could be observed between mild and moderate dysplasia (Fisher Exact test - p<0.001) and between mild and severe dysplasia (p<0.001). Conclusions: The -catenin cytoplasmic expression observed in this study may represent the initial stage of modi cations in the E-cadherin-catenin complex, along with morphological cellular changes.