Cyclooxygenase-2 Expression in Lymphoma in North-West of Iran

Background: lymphomas are a group of malignancies affecting b, t and nk cells. cyclooxygenase-2 (cox-2) enzyme is one of the known inflammatory factors which increase during the inflammation process. increase in cox-2 expression inhibits apoptosis and increases tumor cells invasion and angiogenesis. increase in the cox-2 gene expression is seen in a group of cancers. specific cox-2 inhibition also can be beneficial in some cancers through apoptosis stimulation. materials & methods: in this descriptive-analytic study, the degree of cox-2 expression was evaluated in patients with non-hodgkin lymphoma. the following variables were used in this study: gender, age, lymphoma type, the stage of disease, the degree of disease, the existence of b symptom, extranodal involvement, response to treatment, death and ldh levels. paraffin-embedded tissue blocks from 153 cases of non-hodgkin’ and hodgkin’ lymphoma were selected for immunohistochemical staining of cox-2 expression. results: cox-2 level was reported positive in 4 (4.7%) patients with non-hodgkin's lymphoma and 4 (5.7%) with hodgkin's lymphoma. fifteen patients experienced relapses and 9 died during the median follow-up of 7 years. there was no significant relationship between quantitative and qualitative variables and cox-2 expression. also, there was no relationship between cox-2 and type of lymphoma (p=0.476). conclusion: according to our results, no relationship between cox-2 expression and type of lymphoma was found. we recommend more patient involvement to assess cox-2 expression. apparently, it seems that the patient's race (azari) may have an impact on the results of this study.