Detection of cervical lymph node micrometastases in oral squamous cell carcinoma by cytokeratin 8 mRNA with reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction

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We developed a sensitive method based on amplification of cytokeratin(CK)8 mRNA using the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and Southern blot hybridization for detection of cervical lymph node micrometastases from oral squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). CK8 RT-PCR showed that CK8 mRNA expressed in all of the 10 primary oral SCCs we tested, but not in any of 5 normal lymph nodes, indicating that CK8 mRNA is a good target of RT-PCR for the detection of lymph node micrometastases in oral cancer. We compared the detectability of lymph node metastases with CK8 RT-PCR, Southern blot hybridization and conventional histological examination, using 70 lymph nodes obtained from 10 oral SCC patients. CK8 mRNA was detected in all of the 8 lymph nodes which were histologically metastasis-positive. In addition, 5 (8%) out of the 62 histologically metastasis-negative nodes gave a CK8 product detectable with ethidium staining. On Southern blot hybridization with ^<32>P labeled CK8 cDNA, a 11 (18%) of the lymph nodes that had been judged negative by histology gave positive signals, indicating that these lymph nodes contained micrometastases which could not be detected histologically. These results demonstrate that CK8 RT-PCR is a more sensitive method than histological examination for the detection of lymph node micrometastases in oral SCC.
大阪歯科学会の論文