Nodular fasciitis is the most common reactive mesenchymal lesion to be misidentified as a type of sarcoma. HuR is an mRNA-binding protein that can stabilize cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) mRNA leading to COX-2 overexpression. The aim of this study is a comparison of the expressions of COX-2 and HuR and the relationships between their expressions and the clinicopathological parameters in nodular fasciitis and low-grade sarcoma.

We measured the expression of HuR and COX-2 in 21 cases of nodular fasciitis and 37 cases of low-grade sarcoma using immunohistochemistry.

The frequency of cytoplasmic immunoreactivity for HuR was 5 of 21 cases of nodular fasciitis (23.8%) and 23 of 37 cases of low-grade sarcoma (62.1%) (p=.013). COX-2 expression was moderate or strong in nodular fasciitis (12/21, 57.1%) and in low-grade sarcoma (29/37, 78.4%) (p=.034). In addition, a significant difference existed between these two entities in terms of the relationship between moderate or strong COX-2 expression and HuR cytoplasmic immunoreactivity (p=.009). Moderate or strong COX-2 immunoreactivity correlated with nuclear (p=.016) or cytoplasmic HuR (p=.024) expression in low-grade sarcoma but not in nodular fasciitis.

This study suggests that HuR and COX-2 expression may be useful to differentiate nodular fasciitis from low-grade sarcoma.