Correlation between the expression of CD4 and CD8 and general clinical features (Table 1)
Among the 24 patients with staining of CD4 and CD8, 11 were male and 13 were female; 15 were <60 years old and 9 were ≥60 years old. The lesions were located in the nasal cavity (10), sinus (1), nasal cavity and sinus (10), and nasopharynx (3). According to TNM staging, 12 patients were T3N0M0, 10 were T4aN0M0, and there was 1 each of T4aN1M0 and T4bN0M0. In total, 19 patients had pigmented-type melanocytic lesions and 5 had non-pigmented type. By August 2020, 21 patients were still alive and 3 had died.
According to the scoring criteria for immunohistochemical staining of CD4- and CD8-positive cells discussed in the Methods section, the scores for CD4 in the 24 patients were from 1 to 3, of which 2 cases had a score of 1 point, 21 cases had a score of 2 points, and 1 case had a score of 3 points. For CD8, again the scores were from 1 to 3 with 7 patients scoring 1, 16 scoring 2, and 1 scoring 3. According to the immunohistochemical scores for CD4 and CD8, the patients were divided into two groups: a group with a low expression of CD4 and CD8 (immunohistochemistry score for CD4 and CD8 ≤ 1) and a group with a high expression of CD4 and CD8 (immunohistochemistry score for CD4 and CD8 > 1). In addition, the group with a low expression of CD4/CD8 had a score with both CD4 and CD8 ≤ 1 or one of them ≤1. The group with a high expression of CD4/CD8 had a score with both CD4 and CD8 > 1. The clinical characteristics of the disease (including age, sex, location, pigmentation classification and disease stage) that may be related to each group (low and high expression of CD4, CD8, CD4/CD8) were analyzed and the results are shown in Table 1. It can be seen that there were no statistically significant differences among the groups.
Although there was no correlation between the expression levels of CD4 and CD8 and the clinical features of the various diseases, the following difference can be seen in patients with different primary tumor locations: the high expression rate of CD8 in patients with tumors in the nasal cavity/sinus/nasal cavity and sinus was 85.71%, and that of patients with tumors in the nasopharynx was 66.67% (Fig. 2).[Figure 2 near here]
In addition, the median progression-free survival was 24 months and 4 months respectively in the groups with high and low expression of CD4, and 24 months and 6 months respectively in the groups with high and low expression groups of CD8, although the difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.522). However, the expression of CD4 and CD8 in tumor tissue may be related to the prognosis of patients (Fig. 3).[Figure 3 near here]