Correlation Sal-Like Protein 4 (SALL4) Expression to Histopathological Subtypes in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma at Haji Adam Malik Hospital 2020-2021

Abstract

Background

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a malignant tumor in the head and neck region, which originates from nasopharyngeal epithelial cells. Management of NPC therapy is systemic therapy, surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. SALL4 is a carcinogenesis promoter gene and has been shown to play a role in modulating the effects of NPC radiation therapy.

Methods

Analytic descriptive study with a cross-sectional design on 33 histological specimens diagnosed with NPC from medical records/archives at the Adam Malik Hajj Center General Hospital, Medan, 2020-2021. Each specimen was stained with SALL4 immunohistochemistry. The Mann-Whitney U test (p ≥ 0.05) was used to assess the association of SALL4 expression with NPC histopathological subtypes.

Result

The most gender is male 78.8% of the sample, the most age group is 41-50 years (51.5%) of the sample. Differentiated NKSCC subtypes, strong SALL4 expression in 25% of samples, and weak expression in 75% of samples. The undifferentiated NKSCC subtype had strong SALL4 expression in 21.05% of the samples, and weak expression in 78.95% of the samples. The KSCC subtype had strong SALL4 expression in 16.7% of the samples, and weak expression in 83.3% of the samples. There was no relationship between SALL4 expression in various NPC subtypes. The Mann-Whitney U test was carried out on this variable and obtained a p-value of 0.7101 (p ≥ 0.05).

Conclusion

There is no correlation between SALL4 expression with subtypes in NPC.