The association of Cyclooxygenase expression with pathophysiology of Functional and Non-Functional Pituitary adenoma

Background and aim: Pituitary Adenoma is one of the most common tumor-related inflammatory diseases in the young people that Approximately 2.5 million people in the world and about 35,000 people in Iran are afflicted. The etiology of this type of cancer is un-known and investigations are in progress to clarify the molecular mechanism of pituitary adenoma. It seems that the COX enzyme stimulates the cell proliferation, inhibits the apoptosis, increases the malignant cells’ invasiveness and induces the angiogenesis. The aim of the present study was to investigate the expression level of Cox in tumor tissue of patients with functional and non-functional pituitary adenoma and the relevance of the gene expression level with patient s clinic pathophysiology. Materials and Methods: In this case-control study, 40 patients with pituitary adenoma with who were referred to the Firouzgar Hospital in Tehran were participated. Tumor tissue samples were used to extract mRNA and cDNA, and to determine the gene expression of COX enzyme, the Real-Time PCR-based sybergreen method was used. The correlation of COX enzyme with patient s clinic pathophysiology features were evaluated. Finally, statistical analysis was performed using version 6 of GraphPad Prism software and independent t-test. Results: Measurement of COX enzyme expression level in tumor tissues of patients with functional and non-functional pituitary tumor revealed that the level of this gene was significantly increased in patients comparing to healthy subjects and normal tissues. Also, the increased level of this gene was associated with elevated level of tumor grade and stage. Conclusion: The results of the current study have shown that the COX enzyme can account as local bio marker in patients with functional and non-functional pituitary tumor due to the significant differences of the expression level in patients comparing to controls, it can be noticed as a possible biomarker for controlling disease.

کلیدواژه ها:

functional pituitary adenoma ، non-functional pituitary adenoma ، COX enzyme ، cancer