Overexpression of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma and Its Correlation with Clinicopathological Characteristics in Central Uganda

Aims: The aims of the current study were to determine the prevalence of epidermal growth factor (EGFR) receptor in patients diagnosed with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) as well as assessing the correlation of overexpression of EGFR with age, gender and tumor grades of the cases.

Study Design: This was a cross-sectional analytical study.

Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted in the pathology laboratory at the department of pathology, Makerere College of Health Sciences, Kampala-Uganda for five months.

Methodology: A sample of 127 archival tissue blocks from patients with ESCC diagnosed between 2010 and 2012 were retrieved from the tissue repository and used to assess overexpression of EGFR using monoclonal mouse Anti-human wild type EGFR antibody. For association between age and overexpression of EGFR, Kruskal- Wallis H test was used and for tumor grade and sex and EGFR, Chi-Square test was performed using SPSS version 16.0. P ˂ .05 was considered statistically significant.

Results: The age range of the patients with ESCC in this study was 35-99 years with mean of 59.55 years. The peak age of the cases was 55-64 years. Males and females were 68.5% and 31.5% respectively. Moderately differentiated tumors dominated by comprising 59.9%. The prevalence of overexpression of EGFR was 61.4%. The highest overexpression of EGFR was seen in cases with grade 2 compared to grade 1 and 3 but not statistically significant (P = .255). Overexpression of EGFR was relatively higher in cases with age ≥ 50 years, but the difference was not statistically significant (P = .931). Males expressed relatively higher EGFR than females, however, the difference was not statistically significant (P = .944).

Conclusions: Majority of patients with ESCC in Uganda have moderately differentiated tumor and a significant number of them tend to show overexpression of EGFR antigen.