Expression of Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor in Odontogenic Cysts: Is There Any Impression on Clinical Outcome?

BACKGROUND: The recent scientific reports have shown that angiogenesis can affect biological behavior of pathologic lesions. OBJECTIVE: Regarding unique clinical outcome of Odontogenic keratocyst (OKC), the present study was aimed to compare angiogenesis in Odontogenic keratocyst and Dentigerous cyst (DC). METHOD: In this experimental study, tissue sections of 46 samples of OKC and DC were stained through immunohistochemical method using Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) antibody. VEGF expression was evaluated in epithelial cells, fibroblasts and endothelial cells. The average percentage of stained cells in any samples was categorized to 3 groups as follows: SCORE 0: 10% of cells or less are positive. SCORE 1: 10 to 50% of cells are positive. SCORE 2: more than 50% of cells are positive. Mann-U-Whitney, T-test and chi-square was used for statistical analysis. RESULT: The average of VEGF expression in 24 samples of DC was 20.2% and in 22 samples of OKC was 52.6%, respectively. The average of VEGF expression in these two cysts had statistical significant differences. (PV= 0.045). There was significant statistical differences between two cysts in the terms of VEGF SCORE (PV= 0.000). OKC samples had significantly higher SCORE for the purpose of VEGF incidence than DC. Also, there were no differences between VEGF expression in epithelial cells of two cysts (PV= 0.268) there were significant statistical differences between two cysts in terms of endothelial cell staining. The endothelial cell staining was significantly higher in OKC than DC (PV= 0.037%). CONCLUSION: Regarding higher expression of Vascular Endothelial Growth factor in OKC than DC, it seems that angiogenesis may have great impression on clinical outcome of OKC.