OBJECTIVE:

In the light of recent findings indicating that endocannabinoid system has anti-tumor actions, our study aims to localize it in the human epithelial ovarian tumors, highlighting differences among benign, borderline and invasive forms and correlating CB1-Receptor expression with disease severity.

STUDY DESIGN:

We determined CB1-Receptor immunohistochemical expression in 66 epithelial ovarian tumors treated in the Department of “Women, Child and General and Specialized Surgery”, Second University of Naples, at “S. Maria del Popolo degli Incurabili” Hospital – Naples: 36 borderline ovarian tumors, main target of interest being intermediate forms, 15 benign and 15 invasive ovarian tumors.

RESULTS:

The benign ovarian tumors showed weak expression of CB1-R in the 33% of the cases and moderate expression in the 67% of the cases. Borderline ovarian tumors had a similar trend. They showed weak CB1-R expression in the 28% of the cases, moderate expression in the 53% of the cases and strong expression in the 19% of the cases. In contrast invasive tumors showed weak expression of CB1-R in the 7% of the cases, moderate expression in the 20% of the cases and strong expression in the 73% of the cases.

CONCLUSION:

The recorded data show that the expression of CB1-R increased from benign and borderline to malignant tumors. In the near future endocannabinoid receptors might be used in clinical practice, alone or in combination with other markers, to identify or better characterize ovarian tumors, without considering the great opportunity that they might represent as therapeutic targets.
Copyright © 2014 Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

PMID:

 

24721263

 

[PubMed – as supplied by publisher]