Assessment and clinicopathological correlation of p16 expression in cervical squamous cell carcinoma of Indian population: Diagnostic implications

Abstract

ABSTRACT Background: Our aim was to assess the p16 expression in normal cervical epithelium and cervical lesions and how it correlated with HPV oncoprotein E7 and other etiological parameters of cervical cancer. Methods: For this purpose, we analyzed protein expression of p16 and E7 oncoprotein in total 20 normal cervical epithelium tissue (as control) and 62 cervical lesions. Next, the result was correlated with different clinico-pathological parameters. Results: Out of 62 cases of cervical lesions, we found around 75%–100% of the cervical lesion samples exhibited E7 nuclear protein expression, whereas around 33.33%–75% samples were p16 positive. On the other hand, p16 expression showed strong association with E7 oncoprotein and other clinico-pathological parameters (like high parity, early age of sextual debut) in the same set of samples of our study. Conclusion: We concluded that overexpression of p16 is very practical and can be readily implemented in most diagnostic pathology laboratories.