A comparative study of AgNOR with pcna immunohistochemical staining in oral squamous cell carcinoma

Background: The present study was to compare Argyrophilic Nucleolar Organizer Regions (AgNORs) with Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen (PCNA) expression in Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) and to assess the proliferating activity in OSCC, also to assess the reliability between PCNA and AgNOR. Methods: Previously confirmed 30 cases of oral squamous cell carcinomas were taken for the study. Histological sections were prepared from paraffin embedded blocks and processed for AgNOR stain and PCNA stain according to super sensitive polymer HRP method. The statistical evaluation by ANOVA test helped us to compare and correlate between the two methods. Results: PCNA expression in Well-differentiated OSCC was 61.6471% followed by moderately differentiated OSCC with 72.4% and poorly differentiated OSCC with 89%. The AgNOR count in the well differentiated OSCC had a mean value of 3.4 followed by moderately differentiated OSCC with 3.9 and poorly differentiated OSCC with 9.4. In the current study, on correlation between PCNA and AgNOR, the pearsons co-relation coefficient value was found to be highly significant. Whereas the relation between PCNA and AgNOR within the grades of OSCC were found to be not correlated. This was statistically not significant. Conclusions: Proliferation activity was more in poorly differentiated OSCC followed by moderately differentiated and well differentiated OSCC. The combination of PCNA immunohistochemistry with AgNOR count appears to be an effective means of identifying the proliferating activity of squamous cell carcinoma, thereby appropriate treatment can be given.