Background: There is no information on the effects of leptin receptors expression on mucin-histochemical alterations in human colorectal adenocarcinoma.
Aim: Testing the correlation of leptin receptors expression with histochemical dysregulation of mucins in colorectal adenocarcinoma.
Patients and methods: The study included 75 patients with colorectal adenocarcinoma who underwent surgical resection. Following a routine histopathological tissue analysis, 3-4 μm thick cuts were made onto resected tumors, which underwent a routine Hematoxylin-Eosin, histochemical Alcian Blue-Periodic Acid Schiff, pH 2.5, and High Iron Diamine-Alcian Blue, pH 2.5, methods for mucin differentiation and immunohistochemical Avidin-Biotin peroxidase complex method with anti-Ki67 and anti-leptin receptor antibodies. Following the quantification of results for the statistical analysis, the statistical software package SPSS for Windows (13.0) was used, and the tests for analyzing the significance of differences and correlation analysis - Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, were conducted.
Results: Increased expression of leptin receptors is with highly significant correlation coefficient associated with hypersecretion of sialomucins. Significant positive correlation coefficient exists between the leptin receptors expression against neutral-fucomucins secretion. With weak and negative, but a significant correlation coefficient, leptin receptors expression is associated to the sulfomucins generation.
Conclusions: Increased expression of leptin receptors in colorectal adenocarcinoma is associated with mucin-histochemical abnormalities that are manifested by sialomucins hypersecretion and reduction, ultimately resulting in the absence of sulfomucins secretion.