Amyloidosis in Turkish patients

Amyloidosis is characterized by the systemic or localized extra cellular deposition of amyloid, a proteinaceous fibrillar material in various tissues and organs, mainly classified into primary (AL) or secondary (AA) groups according to the biochemical nature of the fibril forming protein. The histopathological diagnosis was made on Congo red stained biopsy specimens using polarized light and the subtyping of amyloidosis was made by immunohistochemical analysis. One hundred twenty eight amyloid positive biopsies obtained from 111 patients whose paraffin blocks were available for immunohistochemical analysis were included in the study. 111 patients (70 male) with an average age of 34.2 years (range 6-65 years), were included in the study. Amyloid deposits were subtyped immunohistochemically in 128 biopsies. The vast majority (90.9 %) of patients in our study presented with AA amyloidosis. This retrospective study demonstrates that the patient population with amyloidosis in Turkey is significantly different from the western countries. Our results indicate the predominance of AA amyloidosis and also suggest that routine immunohistochemical analysis of amyloidosis cases with certain ethnic background is sufficient to classify the subtype of amyloid fibril protein and the related disease.