Giant cell tumours of the tendon sheath: lack of correlation between nm23-H1 expression and recurrence.

Some authors attribute recurrences of giant cell tumours to biological factors which are only expressed in some tumours. Grover et al. (1998) suggested that the risk for recurrence is associated with the down-regulation of the nm23-H1 gene. We reviewed the charts of the 154 patients operated on for giant cell tumours of the tendon sheath and selected a group of patients with recurrence (ten cases) and a group of patients who did not have a recurrence after a minimum follow-up of 3 years (13 cases). Immunohistochemical detection of nm23-H1 was performed blindly of the clinical outcome on the paraffin-embedded specimens of these patients and no correlation was found between nm23-H1 expression and the risk for recurrence.