BACKGROUND: Studies on monoamine oxidase B (MAO-B) expression in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) are lacking. This study focused on the immunohistochemical evaluation of MAO-B in RCC.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Sixty-three RCC samples were compared on basic clinical and histopathological parameters, including histopathological type and tumor grade. RCC samples were divided according to the histopathological type into 2 groups: conventional type (51 samples) and other types (12 samples). For MAO-B detection, a standard immunohistochemical procedure was employed.

RESULTS: In healthy kidney samples, MAO-B was detected predominantly in tubules. Fifty-two cancer tissue samples were MAO-B negative and 11 tissue samples were MAO-B low positive. Enzymes were detected only in the cytoplasm. We did not find any significant correlation between the percentage of positive MAO-B specimens and nuclear grade. Additionally, Fisher’s test did not reveal any difference in numbers of positive and negative MAO-B samples between the 2 RCC types (P>0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: From our results, it was clear that MAO-B expression played no significant role in stimulation of renal cancer development. We found that MAO-B occurred only in 19% of kidney tumors and that the positivity of protein expression was low. Moreover, it seems that the disappearance of this enzyme in RCC is a consequence of replacement of healthy tissue by cancer cells. On the other hand, one can assume that the loss of MAO-B expression could be associated with severe pathological processes in the kidney.

Keywords: Carcinoma, Renal Cell, monoamine oxidase