Immunohistochemical expression of neuron-specific enolase (NSE) in human pancreatic carcinomas

An immunohistochemical investigation in 41 pancreatic ductal carcinomas was carried out and results were correlated with histologic type, clinical stage, vascular involvement, intrapancreatic neural invasion, extrapancreatic perineural invasion and retroperitoneal invasion. Furthermore, after postoperative cases were excluded, we divided all cases into two groups according to the immunoreactivity of NSE and calculated survival rate of each group. In the normal pancreas, islet cells of the pancreas and neuron fibers around lobules were strongly immunoreactive. Meanwhile, in pancreatic ductal carcinoma, the immunoreactivity was observed in 21 cases (51.2%): the incidence of the immunoreactivity of NSE was higher in tubular adenocarcinoma of the pancreas. Among the clinicopathological parameters of pancreatic carcinoma, the incidence of positive immunoreactivity of NSE was significantly higher in the tumor with intrapancreatic neural invasion. Furthermore, the incidence was also high in the tumor with extrapancreatic neural invasion or vascular involvement, although there were not statistically significances, On the contrary, the patients with positive immunoreactivity of NSE survived longer than those with negative immunoreacticity. These results suggested that immunoreactivity of NSE in pancreatic carcinoma might reflect directly neural invasion status and extension of the carcinoma. Thence, its possible utilization as a useful prognostic parameter.