Quantitative analysis of vascularization, proliferation and expression of androgen receptors by epithelial skin cells in subversive abscessing perifolliculitis of the scalp

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26641/1997-9665.2025.4.74-80

Keywords:

vascularization, Cd34, Ki-67, androgen receptors, abscessing perifolliculitis of the head, Hoffmann's disease, cicatricial alopecia, dermatology.

Abstract

Introduction. Hoffmann's disease or abscessing perifolliculitis of the scalp is a chronic, therapy-resistant and recurrent purulent-inflammatory disease of the hair follicles, which causes the formation of deep abscesses, cicatricial alopecia and significant changes in the scalp. The disease occurs mainly in young men aged 20–40 years. According to the statistics of the medical center of the private enterprise "Dzerkalo", Dnipro, Ukraine, over the past ten years in Ukraine, the number of cases of abscessing perifolliculitis has begun to increase among men, especially military personnel, due to the wearing of specific protective equipment and additional factors of occlusion and inflammation of hair follicles. The aim of the work is to investigate stromal vascularization, proliferation and expression of androgen receptors in the epithelium of the scalp using the Fiji platform in subversive abscessing perifolliculitis of the head. Methods. Biopsy material from patients diagnosed with abscessing perifolliculitis of the head (Hoffmann's disease) who underwent examination and treatment at the medical center of the private enterprise "Dzerkalo", Dnipro, Ukraine was studied. All patients were men, their age ranged from 20 to 51 years, the average age was 35.5±11.54 years. IHC was performed according to the TermoScientific (TS) protocols with primary antibodies to vascular endothelial cells CD34 (sp1, RTU), Ki-67 (sp6, 1:250), AR (sp1, RTU). The Lab Vision Quanto imaging system (TS, USA) was used with the reaction determination using DAB Quanto Chromogen (TS, USA). Results. The average number of CD-34-positive vessels showed a significant difference in the samples of subducting abscessing perifolliculitis of the scalp, compared with the control group in all studied localizations (subepidermal location, deep layers of the dermis, areas around hair follicles, areas around sebaceous glands (all p<0.05), with the highest number of 24.33±3.78 in areas around hair follicles. The average perimeter of CD-34-positive vessels showed a significant difference in the samples of subducting abscessing perifolliculitis of the scalp, compared with the control group in the deep layers of the dermis, areas around hair follicles and sebaceous glands (p<0.05), with the highest value of 85.83 ±10.52 in areas around hair follicles. The Ki-67 proliferation index in reactive stratified squamous epithelium at in subversive abscessing perifolliculitis of the head was 23.46±4.24%, which was statistically significantly different from the control group (p<0.05), whose proliferation rate remained at the level of 5.22±1.58%. In contrast, the expression of androgen receptors in the study and control groups did not show any difference (94.32±15.08% and 82.40±10.26%, respectively, p>0.05), which refutes the theory of hormonal dependence of chronic inflammation in this pathology.

References

  1. Wu Q, Bu W, Zhang Q, Fang F. Therapeutic options for perifolliculitis capitis abscedens et suffodens: A review. Dermatol Ther. 2022;35(10):e15763. doi: 10.1111/dth.15763.
  2. Masson R, Jeong CY, Ma E, Crew AB, Fragoso NM, Shi VY, Hsiao JL. Treatments for Dissecting Cellulitis of the Scalp: A Systematic Review and Treatment Algorithm. Dermatol Ther (Heidelb). 2023;13(11):2487-526. doi: 10.1007/s13555-023-01018-7.
  3. Yu Chen, Yan-Ping Yang, Fang Qiu, Yu-Jie Wang, Yi-Ming Fan, Immunophenotyping comparison of inflammatory cells between Malassezia folliculitis and pityriasis versicolor lesions. Medical Mycology. 2022;60(1):myab073. doi: 10.1093/mmy/ myab073.
  4. Melo DF, Lemes LR, Pirmez R, Duque-Estrada B. Trichoscopic stages of dissecting cellulitis: a potential complementary tool to clinical assessment. An Bras Dermatol. 2020;95(4):514-17. doi: 10.1016/j.abd.2019.10.008.
  5. Scheinfeld N. Dissecting cellulitis (perifolliculitis capitis abscedens et suffodiens): a comprehensive review focusing on new treatments and findings of the last decade with commentary comparing the therapies and causes of dissecting cellulitis to hidradenitis suppurativa. Dermatol Online J. 2014;20(5):22692.
  6. Wolff H, Fischer TW, Blume-Peytavi U. The Diagnosis and Treatment of Hair and Scalp Diseases. Dtsch Arztebl Int. 2016;113(21):377-86. doi: 10.3238/arztebl.2016.0377.
  7. Calonje E, Brenn T, Lazar A, Steven D. Billings McKee's Pathology of the Skin with Clinical Correlations, 5th Edition. Elsevier; 2019. 1980 p.
  8. Cuellar TA, Roh DS, Sampson CE. Dissecting cellulitis of the scalp: a review and case studies of surgical reconstruction. Plast Reconstr Surg Glob Open. 2020;8(8):e3015. doi:10.1097/GOX. 0000000000003015.
  9. Takahashi T, Yamasaki K, Terui H, et al. Perifolliculitis capitis abscedens et suffodiens treatment with tumor necrosis factor inhibitors: a case report and review of published cases. J Dermatol. 2019;46(9):802-7. doi:10.1111/1346-8138.14998.
  10. World Medical Association. World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki: ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects. JAMA. 2013;310(20):2191-4. doi: 10.1001/ jama.2013.281053.
  11. Vareniuk IM, Dzerzhynskyi ME. [Methods of cyto-histological diagnosis]. Kyiv: Interservis. 2019. 256 p. Ukrainian.
  12. Nguyen T. Immunohistochemistry: A Technical Guide to Current Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2022. 282 p.
  13. Ma YL, Peng JY, Zhang P, et al. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed CD34 and Ki67 protein expression as significant prognostic factors in colorectal cancer. Med Oncol. 2010; 27:304-309. doi: 10.1007/s12032-009-9210-3.
  14. Chantrain CF, DeClerck YA, Groshen S, McNamara G. Computerized quantification of tissue vascularization using high-resolution slide scanning of whole tumor sections. J Histochem Cytochem. 2003;51(2):151-158. doi: 10.1177/ 002215540305100203.
  15. Schindelin J, Arganda-Carreras I, Frise E, et al. Fiji: an open-source platform for biological-image analysis. Nature Methods. 2012;9(7):676-682. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.2019.
  16. Petrovska I, Salyha Y, Vudmaska I. [Statistical methods in biological research: educational and methodological manual]. Kyiv: Agrarian science; 2022. 172 p. Ukrainian.

Downloads

Published

2025-10-30

How to Cite

Poslavska , O., Statkevych , O., & Svyatenko , T. (2025). Quantitative analysis of vascularization, proliferation and expression of androgen receptors by epithelial skin cells in subversive abscessing perifolliculitis of the scalp. Морфологія / Morphologia / Morfologìâ, 19(4), 74–80. https://doi.org/10.26641/1997-9665.2025.4.74-80

Issue

Vol. 19 No. 4 (2025)

Section

Статті

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

 The authors reserve the right to authorship of their work and transfer to the Journal the right to the first publication of this work under the terms of a license Creative commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), which allows other people to freely distribute the published work with a mandatory reference to the authors of the original work and the first publication of the work in this journal.
        By submitting a manuscript to the editorial office of the Journal ‘Morphologia’ authors agree to transfer the rights to protect and use the manuscript (all supplemental materials, particularly protected objects such as photos, drawings, diagrams, tables, etc.), including the reproduction in the press and distribution via the Internet; translation of the manuscript into any language; export and import of journal copies with the Authors’ article in order to make it available for public. Authors convey the rights mentioned above to the editorial office without any temporal or territorial limitation all over the world. 
        The Authors guarantee that they have the exclusive rights to use the material transferred to editorial office. Editors are not responsible to third parties for contraventions of warranty given by the Authors. The considered rights are transferred to the editorial office since the moment when the current issue is signed for publishing. Reproduction of materials published in the Journal by other individuals and legal entities is possible only with the consent of Editorial office, with the obligatory indication of the full bibliographic reference of the primary publication. The Authors reserve the right to use the published material, its fragments and parts for teaching materials, oral presentations, dissertation thesis prepararion with obligatory bibliographic citation of the original paper. Electron copy of the published article, downloaded from official journal web-site in .pdf format may be put by authors on the official web-site of their institutions, any other official resources with open access.