Expression analysis of histidine decarboxylase in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma patients

Esophageal cancer is considered among the ten most prevalent malignancies and the sixth leading cause of cancer deaths. Histamine has role in numerous physiological/ pathological responses, including gastric acid secretion, immune response and neurotransmission as well as angiogenesis or cancer. Histidine decarboxylase (HDC) catalyzes the formation of histamine from histidine. HDC has been proposed as a novel biomarker for neuroendocrine differentiation, inflammatory pathologies and various leukemia and highly malignant types of tumors, such as small cell lung carcinoma and melanoma. HDC over-expression was reported in a number of malignancies including melanoma, small cell lung carcinoma, breast cancer and colorectal carcinoma. In the present study, we examined the mRNA expression of HDC in patients with ESCC (squamous cell carcinoma). Conducting quantitative Real-time PCR, the expression level of HDC in normal and tumor tissues of 50 consented subjects with ESCC was studied. The results of molecular analysis were correlated to the clinical parameters such as age, stage, grade of differentiation, lymph node and tumor size. Compared with normal tissues, 6 out of 50 (12%) of specimen were found to represent a HDC over expression. Statistical analysis revealed that there are no correlations between HDC expression and clinicopathological features. Considering the lack of significant statistical correlation between the level of mRNA expression and clinicopathological features, it seems that the HDC has minimal role in ESCC progression and tumorigenesis.