evaluation of tissue expression and salivary levels of her2/neu in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

introduction: her2/neu, a member of the epidermal growth factor receptor family, has been shown to be over-expressed in some tumors. the purpose of this study was to determine the salivary levels and tissue expression of her2/neu in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (hnscc) and their correlation with clinicopathologic parameters.   materials and methods: enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (elisa) were used to evaluate the salivary levels of her2/neu and immunohistochemistry was used to measure tissue expression of her2/neu in 28 patients with hnscc and 25 healthy control subjects.   results: the salivary levels of her2/neu in patients with hnscc were not significantly higher compared to healthy control subjects. there was no apparent correlation between salivary her2/neu levels and clinicopathological features such as age, sex, tumor grade, tumor size and nodal status. all hnscc specimens were positive (membranous or/and cytoplasmic) for her2/neu, except one sample. only one hnscc specimen showed staining purely in the tumor-cell cytoplasm. all control specimens were also positive for both membranous and cytoplasmic her2/neu but there was a significant difference between the level of cytoplasmic staining in the hnscc specimens and in the control specimens (p<0.05).   conclusion: in our study, no overexpression of her2/neu was observed. thus, identification of her2/neu levels plays no role in differentiating between normal and squamous cell carcinoma tissues or detecting the carcinogenesis process. our findings suggest that the use of her2/neu as a salivary marker of hnscc is not recommended, because no significant preoperative elevation and no association with clinicopathological features were found.