Immunohistochemical Analysis of Estrogen and Progesterone Receptor Expression in Gingival Lesions

Some lesion s in the oral cavity and mostly on gingiva have predominant pred ilection towards female s, and mostly occur inthe first four decades of life when changes in sex hormon e levels in blood are obvious. the present study aimed to investigatethe presence and dist ributi on of estro gen and progesterone receptors in per ipheral gia nt cell granuloma (pgcg) , pyogenicgranuloma (pg) and peripheral ossi fying fibrom a (pof) on gingiva as an organ target. in a descriptive case seriesstudy from march 2002 to april 2003, paraffin blocks from patients with exophitic lesion on gingiva, diagnosed byhistopathology as pgcg, pg or pof at denti stry faculty of tehran universi ty of med ical sciences (tums), iran, wereanal yzed with immunohistochemical (ihc) technique. the data analysis was performed by frequency and descr iptive stat istics.of 35 patients, 12 estrogen receptors (ers) and proge sterone receptors (prs ) were detected. nine of them were prsand three were ers. two third of ers/ prs were seen in females and one third in males, respectively. in order of decreasingfrequency the ers and prs were found in pg (n=6 ), pof (n=4) and pgcg (n=2). in this study, erjpr were revealedin three lesions. pr was detected in all of three lesion s but we could not see er in pgcg. thu s, gingiva may be consideredas a target organ for sex hormones.