Abstract
BACKGROUND: Egypt has a significantly higher prevalence of cancer bladder than the rest of the world. CD-14 antigen is involved in Toll-like receptor-mediated signaling pathways in inflammatory tumor microenvironment which promote tumor development and proliferation. There have been few studies on CD14 antigen effect on urothelial carcinoma of the urinary bladder. This study aimed to evaluate the role of CD14 in prognosis of uurothelial carcinoma of the urinary bladder and its association with the tumor progression. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This retrospective cross-sectional study included fifty-one cases of urothelial carcinoma obtained either by cystoscopic biopsies or radical cystectomies. They were immunohistochemically stained using anti- CD14 antibody. Statistical correlations between CD14 expression and available clinicopathological data were done. RESULTS: Positive immunoexpression of CD14 was noted in 84.3% of all cases, showing scores 1, 2 & 3 in 9.8%, 29.4%, and 45.1% of cases, respectively. While negative immunoexpression was noted in 15.7% of cases and was scored as 0. A statistically significant correlation was noticed between CD14 immunohistochemical expression and each of the tumor grade, pathological tumor stage, status of muscle invasion, and pathological lymph node stage (P value=0.045, 0.030, 0.001, and 0.008 respectively). However, no statistically significant correlation was noted between CD14 immunohistochemical expression and each of the two-year survival rates in radical cystectomy cases and the mortality rate after exclusion of the postoperative complications (P value = 0.114 & 0.156 respectively). CONCLUSION: The intensity of CD14 expression was weak and even lost in high-grade and late-stage urothelial bladder carcinoma cases, while low-grade urothelial carcinoma cases showed CD14 overexpression. Accordingly, the significance of therapeutic approaches targeting CD14 in high-grade and late-stage urothelial bladder carcinoma shall be questionable.