A Novel Candidate Molecule in the Pathological Grading of Gliomas: ELABELA

Özet

AIM: To investigate the possible role of ELABELA (ELA) in the histopathological grading of gliomas.MATERIAL and METHODS: We retrospectively assessed pathological specimens of patients who underwent surgery for intracranialspace-occupying lesions. Only primary glioma specimens were included in this study. We enrolled 11 patients histologicallydiagnosed with low-grade glioma and 22 patients with high-grade glioma. The ELA antibody was applied to 4–6-µm-thick sectionsobtained from paraffin blocks. Histoscores were calculated using the distribution and intensity of staining immunoreactivity. Anindependent sample t-test was used for two-point inter-group assessments, whereas one-way analysis of variance was used forthe other assessments. p<0.05 was considered statistically significant.RESULTS: The histoscores of the control brain, low-grade glioma, and high-grade glioma tissues were found to be 0.08, 0.37,and 0.92, respectively. The difference in ELA immunoreactivity between the control brain tissue and glioma tissue was statisticallysignificant (p<0.05). In addition, a statistically significant increase was observed in ELA immunoreactivity in high-grade gliomatissues compared with that in low-grade glioma tissues (p<0.05).CONCLUSION: ELA has an angiogenetic role in the progression of glial tumors. ELA, which is an endogenous ligand of the apelinreceptor, activates the apelinergic system and causes the progression of glial tumors. Further studies with a large number ofpatients are necessary to investigate the angiogenetic role of ELA in glial tumors.