Tumor infiltrating lymphocytes can help to identify CD8+ tumor infiltrating lymphocytes and histopathologic subtypes of ovarian carcinoma

Abstract

Ovarian carcinoma is the common cause of most death cases in female genital malignancy. Ovarian carcinoma is considered as one of the carcinomas that can evoke immune responses. One of the immune responses is characterized by lymphocyte infiltration of a tumor (tumor infiltrating lymphocytes). This study aims to determine the association of density of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) with CD8+ tumor infiltrating lymphocytes and histopathologic subtypes of ovarian carcinoma. This study was a cross-sectional study. Samples were taken based on five main histopathologic subtypes of ovarian carcinoma from January 1, 2015, until December 31, 2017, comprising 50 cases. All preparations were stained with CD8 monoclonal antibody. The density of intratumoral and stromal TILs was subsequently evaluated on histopathologic preparations and immunohistochemical examination. The association between the density of TILs, CD8+ tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and histopathologic subtypes of ovarian carcinoma was evaluated using Spearman, Kruskal-Wallis, and Mann-Whitney test. The density of TILs and intratumoral CD8+ TILs were associated with histopathologic subtypes, especially high-grade serous carcinoma that had a different density value compared to other histopathologic subtypes. In addition, the density of TIL and intratumoral CD8+ TIL had a meaningful association with histopathologic subtypes of ovarian carcinoma.