Accuracy of combined protein gene product 9.5 and parafibromin markers for immunohistochemical diagnosis of parathyroid carcinoma.

CONTEXT

Parafibromin, encoded by HRPT2, is the first marker with significant benefit in the diagnosis of parathyroid carcinoma. However, because parafibromin is only involved in up to 70% of parathyroid carcinomas and loss of parafibromin immunoreactivity may not be observed in all cases of HRPT2 mutation, a complementary marker is needed.

OBJECTIVE

We sought to determine the efficacy of increased expression of protein gene product 9.5 (PGP9.5), encoded by ubiquitin carboxyl-terminal esterase L1 (UCHL1) as an additional marker to loss of parafibromin immunoreactivity for the diagnosis of parathyroid carcinoma.

DESIGN

In total, 146 parathyroid tumors and nine normal tissues were analyzed for the expression of parafibromin and PGP9.5 by immunohistochemistry and for UCHL1 by quantitative RT-PCR. These samples included six hyperparathyroidism-jaw tumor syndrome-related tumors and 24 sporadic carcinomas.

RESULTS

In tumors with evidence of malignancy, strong staining for PGP9.5 had a sensitivity of 78% for the detection of parathyroid carcinoma and/or HRPT2 mutation and a specificity of 100%. Complete lack of nuclear parafibromin staining had a sensitivity of 67% and a specificity of 100%. PGP9.5 was positive in a tumor with the HRPT2 mutation L64P that expressed parafibromin. Furthermore, UCHL1 was highly expressed in the carcinoma/hyperparathyroidism-jaw tumor syndrome group compared to normal (P < 0.05) and benign specimens (P < 0.001).

CONCLUSION

These results suggest that positive staining for PGP9.5 has utility as a marker for parathyroid malignancy, with a slightly superior sensitivity (P = 0.03) and similar high specificity to that of parafibromin.