Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany.
Institute of Pathology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany.
Biomed Res Int. 2017;2017:1807056. doi: 10.1155/2017/1807056. Epub 2017 Dec 19.
Even though branchial cleft cysts are currently accepted as a congenital anomaly, there is often a long delay until clinical presentation; branchial cleft cysts classically appear in the second to fourth decade of life. Our observation of their occurrence in three pregnant women encouraged us to contemplate a possible hormonal influence.
Immunohistological analysis was performed for the evaluation of the estrogen receptor alpha (ER) in paraffin-embedded tissue specimens of 16 patients with a diagnosis of branchial cleft cyst, with three of them being pregnant.
Expression of ER was detected within epithelial cells only in branchial cleft cysts in pregnant females; moreover, higher growth fractions (Ki-67/Mib1) were found.
The fact that the estrogen receptor was expressed only in pregnant women, in contrast to 13 investigated cases, may suggest that the high level of estrogen in pregnancy is a possible explanation for the spontaneous growth of branchial cleft cysts.
尽管鳃裂囊肿目前被认为是一种先天性异常，但通常要经过很长时间才会出现临床表现；鳃裂囊肿通常出现在第二到第四个十年。我们观察到在三名孕妇中发生了这种情况，这促使我们考虑可能存在激素影响。
对 16 名诊断为鳃裂囊肿的患者的石蜡包埋组织标本进行了雌激素受体 alpha（ER）的免疫组织化学分析，其中 3 名患者为孕妇。
在孕妇的鳃裂囊肿中，仅在表皮细胞中检测到 ER 的表达；此外，还发现了更高的增殖分数（Ki-67/Mib1）。
与 13 例患者相比，只有孕妇的雌激素受体表达，这表明妊娠期间高水平的雌激素可能是鳃裂囊肿自发生长的一个可能解释。
