Increased androgen receptor expression in serous carcinoma of the ovary is associated with an improved survival
Author
Summary, in English
Background: Altered androgen hormone homeostasis and androgen receptor (AR) activity have been implicated in ovarian carcinogenesis but the relationship between AR expression in ovarian cancer and clinical outcome remains unclear. Methods: In this study, the prognostic impact of AR expression was investigated using immunohistochemistry in tissue microarrays from 154 incident cases of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) in the prospective, population-based cohorts Malmo Diet and Cancer Study and Malmo Preventive Project. A subset of corresponding fallopian tubes (n = 36) with no histopathological evidence of disease was also analysed. Results: While abundantly expressed in the majority of fallopian tubes with more than 75% positive nuclei in 16/36 (44%) cases, AR was absent in 108/154 (70%) of EOC cases. AR expression was not related to prognosis in the entire cohort, but in the serous subtype (n = 90), AR positivity (> 10% positive nuclei) was associated with a prolonged disease specific survival in univariate (HR= 0.49; 95% CI 0.25- 0.96; p= 0.038) and multivariate (HR= 0.46; 95% CI 0.22-0.97; p= 0.042) analysis, adjusted for age, grade and clinical stage. Conclusions: AR expression is considerably reduced in EOC as compared to fallopian tubes, and in EOC of the serous subtype, high AR expression is a favourable prognostic factor. These results indicate that assessment of AR expression might be of value for treatment stratification of EOC patients with serous ovarian carcinoma.
Publishing year
2010
Language
English
Publication/Series
Journal of Ovarian Research
Volume
3
Full text
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
BioMed Central (BMC)
Topic
- Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Medicine
Status
Published
Research group
- Pathology, Malmö
- Surgery
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1757-2215