Dendritic/Langerhans Cells and Prognosis in Patients with Papillary Thyroid Carcinomas: Immunocytochemical Study of 106 Thyroid Neoplasms Correlated to Follow-up Data

Abstract

Paraffin sections of 106 primary thyroid carcinomas were the subject of an immunocytochemical study to determine the density of infiltrates of S-100 protein-positive dendritic/Langerhans cells (LC), lysozyme-positive histiocytes, and LCA-positive lymphocytes. Evidence of dense infiltrates of LCs was found only in the majority of papillary thyroid carcinomas (PCs). The determination of the quantity of LCs proved to be a highly effective means of assessing the prognosis of these tumors. Irrespective of other morphologic and clinical features, no single instance of death resulting from cancer occurred among 23 PCs with dense LC infiltrates (including 6 tumors of stage pT4), while 9 of 53 (17%) of the remaining patients ultimately died from thyroid cancer. On the other hand, the degree of histiocytic and lymphocytic infiltrations was not associated with a distinct biologic behavior neither among PC nor among the remaining thyroid carcinomas. These findings suggest that LCs may play an important role in the immunologic defense mechanisms of the host against the tumor only in the papillary type of thyroid cancer.

Immunohistochemical Study of CD1a-labeled Langerhans Cells and Anti-tumor Immune Cells in Oral Verrucous Carcinomas.

“…The density of CD1a-positive LCs has been found to differ slightly according to site in normal oral mucosa (18); however, we found no significance relation between the density of CD1a-positive LCs and site. Tumor stage has been reported to affect the density of CD1a-positive LCs in several carcinomas (16)(17)(18)35). In our study, there was no significant correlation between the number of CD1a-positive LCs and the T-classification of OVCs; however, the numbers of intraepithelial and subepithelial CD1a-positive LCs in T3 stage OVCs were slightly lower than those in T1 and T2 stage OVCs.…”

“…These results suggest that LCs might affect the progression of OVCs. Numerous studies have demonstrated a correlation between the density of CD1a-positive LCs and outcome, including recurrence and survival (14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19). In the present study, the incidence of recurrence was too low to permit a meaningful analysis of the correlation with CD1a-positive cell density.…”

“…Numerous clinical studies have shown that dense infiltration of LCs in primary tumors significantly correlates with a good outcome in patients with carcinoma (14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19). Recent in vitro and in vivo studies have led to the clinical use of DC-based immunotherapy against several types of carcinoma (20)(21)(22)(23)(24).…”

Dendritic cell density and activation status in human breast cancer – CD1a, CMRF-44, CMRF-56 and CD-83 expression

“…Dendritic cells (DC) have been identified as the specialist leukocyte population capable of initiating and directing immune responses. Studies of gastric, thyroid, lung and colorectal carcinomas have shown that the density of putative dendritic cells (DC) (CD1a; S-100 positive) is a predictor of survival (Tsujitani et al, 1987(Tsujitani et al, , 1988(Tsujitani et al, , 1990(Tsujitani et al, , 1992Ambe et al, 1989;Schroder et al, 1988;Zeid and Muller, 1993). Equally, more recent studies suggest minimal recruitment and activation of DC in renal, prostate and bladder cancers (Troy et al, 1998a(Troy et al, ,b, 1999 and that S-100 staining may correlate with an activated DC subset (Troy et al, 1998a).…”

Thyroid Langerhans cell histiocytosis and papillary thyroid carcinoma

“…It will be interesting to postulate that this induced inflammatory infiltrate may further develop into a neoplastic transformation into LCH (14,15).…”