Effectiveness of mucin histochemical staining in the diagnosis of malignant lesions of the prostate

Abstract

Introduction: Prostate cancer is one of the main causes of death in the world and it is predicted by the World Health Organization (WHO) that in the next 10 years 84 million people will die for this reason if no action is taken; That makes it an important health problem for humanity. Materials and Methods: In this work, the effectiveness of the histochemical staining techniques periodic acid Schiff (PAS), Alcian Blue and PAS-Alcian Blue for the differential diagnosis between benign hyperplastic lesions of the prostate and well-differentiated adenocarcinoma was evaluated. For this, an analytical and comparative study was carried out with the data collected from the Statistical Registry of Biopsies for a universe of 553 ballots, which remain archived in the Department of Pathological Anatomy of the General Teaching Hospital “Dr. Juan Bruno Zayas Alfonso” from Santiago de Cuba during the period 2018-2019. Results: 98.44% of benign hyperplasias were found to be positive with PAS and none of them with Alcian Blue, while 49.1% of all carcinomas were positive with the latter. Of the well differentiated, only 3 were positive with the PAS, neutral mucin (1.9%). Discussion: These results are similar to the investigations carried out by Durgaprasad N Agrawal et al., in which a positivity for prostatic hyperplasia (neutral mucin-PAS) and for prostate adenocarcinoma (acidic mucin-PAS) was found. Alcian Blue) of 46.66%, in relation to hyperplasia and cancer. Conclusions: Histochemical mucin stains with Periodic Acid of Shiff (PAS) and Alcian Blue 2.5 pH (AB) are effective techniques that can be used to differentiate well-differentiated adenocarcinoma of the prostate from other benign lesions of the prostate. Although acidic mucin is not present in poorly differentiated carcinomas, it is useful for the differential diagnosis of benign lesions.