[Measurement of content of collagen type IV and laminin in tissue of oral squamous cell carcinoma and its clinical significance].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relationship between the content of collagen type IV (ColIV) and laminin (LN) in tissue of oral squamous cell carcinoma and the clinicopathological parameters.

METHODS: 30 patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma came into the study, 6 normal mucosa tissue came from patients who underwent orthogathic operations. The extraction solution was prepared by homogenizing of cancer and normal mucosa tissue in extraction buffer. The content of ColIV and LN in tissue of oral squamous cell carcinoma were measured by radioimmunoassay and represented by amount of per milliliter extraction solution. Mode of invasion (MI) was divided into 4 types basing on the relationship between normal and cancer tissue. The results of measurement of content of ColIV and LN were expressed using mean +/- s, whose correlation with clinicopathological parameters was evaluated by using Student t test.

RESULTS: The MI classification showed that type I consisted of 4 cases, and type II comprised 12 cases. 5 and 9 cases belonged to type III and type IV respectively. The content of LN and ColIV in tumor tissue were 1.02 +/- 0.11 micrograms/ml and 1.83 +/- 0.21 micrograms/ml respectively, and the content of LN and ColIV in normal tissue were 1.98 +/- 0.23 micrograms/ml and 2.87 +/- 0.45 micrograms/ml respectively. There was significant difference between the content of ColIV and LN in normal and tumor tissue, and the content of ColIV and LN in normal tissue was much higher than that in cancer tissue (P < 0.05, P < 0.01). No relationship was found between the variation of ColIV and LN content and location and pathological grade of squamous cell carcinoma (P > 0.05), but it was found the content of LN and ColIV in patients with neck lymph node metastasis were greater than that in patients without metastasis (P < 0.05). Content of LN and ColIV also showed negative relationship with the MI index.

CONCLUSION: The assay of LN and ColIV in tumor might be useful for diagnosis of metastasis of oral squamous cell carcinoma, and moreover, the relationship between ColIV and LN and MI also gives the suggestion that ColIV and LN may play some roles in preventing the invasion of oral squamous cell carcinoma.