Abstract:
Objective To evaluate the somatostatin receptor (SSTR) profile in pituitary thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH)-producing adenoma and to perform an exploratory study of automated image analysis for the digitized whole slide.
Methods This retrospective study of pituitary TSH-producing adenoma including cases admitted in Peking Union Medical College Hospital from January 2013 to December 2019 analyzed the SSTR profile in the archived formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissues using immunohistochemistry (IHC). Scoring of IHC staining was performed using both conventional microscopic evaluation and automated image analysis for the digitized whole slide. We compared the correlation coefficient between the two methods and analyzed the correlation between SSTR expression and clinical-pathological characteristics (including sex, age, tumor size, Ki-67 index, and invasiveness).
Results Thirty-seven cases of TSH-producing adenomas were included; most had a high expression (Score 3 or 2) of SSTRs except SSTR3. Overall, more than 50% cases scored 3 (59.50%, 78.40%, 64.9%, and 56.80% of the cases scored 3 for SSTR1, SSTR2, SSTR4, and SSTR5, respectively). SSTR1 expression showed a significantly negative correlation with invasiveness (r=-0.417, P=0.010 for conventional scoring; r=-0.406, P=0.013 for automated image analytic scoring), whereas SSTR2 expression showed significant correlation (r=-0.420, P=0.010 for conventional scoring; r=-0.338, P=0.040 for automated image analytic scoring). All SSTRs showed good consistence between two scoring methods.
Conclusions In this TSH-producing adenoma case series, we identified a high expression of SSTR1, SSTR2, SSTR4, and SSTR5 and applied automated image analysis for the digitized whole slide of TSH-producing adenoma; an effect similar to that of conventional scoring was acquired.