human epidermal growth factor receptor expression in colorectal cancer and its relationship with clinicopathological characteristics

background: some recent studies reported human epidermal growth factor receptor (her-2/neu) as a marker that can be used in immunological studies of colorectal carcinoma for predicting the prognosis and the treatment. therefore, we aimed to investigate the frequency of her-2 expression in patients with colorectal cancer, and explore the relationship between clinicopathological prognostic factors and its expression based on immunohistochemical analysis. methods: this study included 50 patients with a histologically proven diagnosis of colorectal carcinoma who received surgery at imam khomeini hospital affiliated to mazandaran university of medical sciences. first, her-2/neu protein expressions were detected by immunohistochemistry and then the data extracted from recorded files. results: the median age of the patients was 60.2±13.9 years (range: 25-93 years). there was no significant relationship between size of tumor, age, sex, lymph node metastases, distant metastasis, differentiation, and stage of the disease with positive expression of her-2 in this study. conclusion: no significant relationship between expression of her-2 and clinicopathological prognostic factors was found in our study. further comprehensive and prospective trial with standard method to evaluate the role of her-2 expression among patients with colorectal cancer is needed.