Abstract:

Canine soft tissue tumors include a group of mesenchymal tumors with various tumor subtypes. Soft tissue sarcomas, on the other hand, are a complex group of tumors that are difficult to treat and have high invasion and metastasis potential. In order to determine the prognosis in malignant tumors, staging is made according to histopathological grading and metastasis features. There is information that inflammatory cell infiltrations are associated with malignancy in many human and animal tumors. Macrophages and neutrophils are found in inflammatory cells whose infiltration is observed in malignant tumor tissues. There are subtypes of both inflammatory cells, and the types associated with malignancy and poor prognosis in tumors are called tumor-associated macrophages and tumor-associated neutrophils. In this study, the presence of calprotectin positive neutrophils and macrophages in canine soft tissue tumors was investigated by immunohistochemical methods. For this purpose, mesenchymal tumors of different origins from 31 dogs of different breed, age and sex were examined. After the histopathological classification of the tumors, a comparison was made between benign and malignant tumors in terms of calprotectin positive macrophages and neutrophils. Calprotectin positivity in malignant soft tissue tumors was found to be significantly higher than benign tumors in the evaluations made on the basis of all positive cells. In the evaluations made only in terms of macrophages, a significant increase in malignant tumors was also noted. No statistically significant difference was found between benign and malignant tumors in terms of neutrophil presence. According to the results in our study, it was observed that calprotectin positive leukocyte infiltrations could be associated with malignancy in canine soft tissue tumors.

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