Abstract

Background. Ameloblastoma is the most common odontogenic epithelial tumor. They are slow-growing, locally invasive and have various sizes, radiological imagings and histopathological subtypes. This tumor infiltrate the surroundings tissue by degrade the extracellular matrix, this activity can be seen based on the expression of MMP-9.

Objective. To investigate if there any difference in agresitivity of ameloblastoma based on MMP-9 expression in various histopayhological subtypes, rradiological imaging and tumor size.

Material and Methods. This is descriptive study with cross sectional approach. The samples of this study are medical records and slides/ paraffin blocks of patients that has been diagnosed as ameloblastomas at Haji Adam Malik General Hospital Medan. Ameloblastoma were stained by MMP-9 then evaluated by semiqualitative methods and related to histopathological subtypes, radiological imaging and tumor size.

Results. Based on data from 24 samples in this study showed all the samples were  stained positively, 13 were weak expression  and 11 were strong. Histopathological subtypes that found were follicular, plexiform, unilocular, extraosseus. Unilocular and extraosseus showed strong expression while follicular and plexiform showed various expression. The multilocular imaging showed mostly weak expression while the unilocular showed mostly strong expression, but not significant (p-value 0,537). For tumor size , 5 cm mostly showed strong expression, 5-10 cm mostly showed weak expression and > 10 cm showed equal strong and weak expression, but they had no significance (p-value 0,673).

Conclusion.There was no significant correlation between MMP-9 expression with ameloblastoma's  radiological imaging and tumor size. Plexiform type mostly had strong expression.