Pérdida de la expresión antigénica ABH en pacientes con lesiones orales precancerosas y cancerosas

the abh antigens, which are produced by the interaction of 2 genetic systems, hh and abo, are subjected to laws of heredity and may be located not only in the erythrocytes, but also in most of the human cells. the objective of this paper was to investigate the expression of abh antigens in patients with premalignant and malignant oral lesions. work was done with samples included in paraffin plugs in patients with oral lesions (n= 57). the patients were classified into 2 groups: a) clinical and anatomopathologically diagnosed premalignant and malignant lesions, and b) benign lesions (n=93). the abh antigens were investigated by the modified specific immunoadherence technique. adherence to the vascular tissue was used as a positive control, whereas adherence to the fat tissue was considered as a negative control. the results were semiquantified from strongly positive to negative adherence. a significant relation between the abh antigen expression and the degree of malignancy of the analyzed lesions (p yates= 0.005) was observed. the loss of abh reactivity in the sites of greater tumoral invasiveness is correlated with the tumor development degree, the histological degree and its malignancy.