DNA flow cytometry of reclassified subtypes of malignant salivary gland tumors

Abstract

Malignant salivary gland tumors are rare, constitute a heterogeneous group and are often difficult to diagnose histologically. This is borne out by the fact that in the present study 43.2% of 118 salivary gland tumors originally diagnosed as mucoepidermoid, acinic cell and adenoid cystic carcinomas had their original diagnosis altered upon reclassification. Patients with confirmed adenoid cystic carcinomas had a much worse prognosis than those with mucoepidermoid and acinic cell carcinomas. DNA flow cytometry showed that very few of the above mentioned three types of malignant neoplasms revealed aneuploid DNA stemlines, indicating that this is not a relevant prognostic tumor marker within the groups. However, several of the tumors that had their diagnosis changed, mostly to undifferentiated adeno- or squamous cell carcinomas, showed aneuploid DNA stemlines. The survival time of patients with aneuploid tumors was considerably reduced compared to those with diploid tumors. Among confirmed acinic cell, mucoepidermoid and adenoid cystic carcinomas the S-phase fraction was a significant prognostic factor, as it was among all tumors examined. This indicates that DNA aneuploidy and S-phase fractions are potential prognostic factors for malignant salivary gland tumors, and that DNA flow cytometry may assist the characterization of such tumors.

Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma of the Head and Neck

“…Markers implicated in prognosis include DNA ploidy, 13 nucleolar-organizing regions, 14 Ki-67 antigen expression, 15 and S-phase value. 16 Previous DNA analysis of patients with ACC at our institution indicated a significant correlation between DNA ploidy and patient survival. 11 This analysis reviewed clinical aspects of the disease and tumor histological features only.…”

Parotid gland lesions: Diagnosis of malignancy with MRI and flow cytometric DNA analysis and cytology in fine-needle aspiration biopsy

“…Prognosis of patients with aneuploid malignancies is reported to be significantly worse than that of patients with diploid malignancies. [3][4][5]8 Recent studies showed that the percentage of cell proliferative rate such as SPF or (S + G2M) fractions is more useful than DNA ploidy for predicting prognosis and tumor activity. 3,4 However, there are negative studies also.…”

“…1,2 Cell proliferative fraction reflects in Sphase fraction (SPF) or S plus G2 plus M phases (S + G2M) fraction which serves as a marker for tumor activity. 1,3,4 These cytometric results have been primarily used in the prediction of tumor aggressiveness and prognosis, and therefore, to our knowledge, there is little literature focusing on its capability for diagnosing malignancies in the parotid gland. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] From the radiologic aspect, many radiologists have attempted to find magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) features for predicting malignancy of the parotid gland with success to some extent.…”

DNA-Ploidie und proliferative Aktivität bei Speicheldrüsentumoren

“…Offensichtlich aufgrund der geringen Häufigkeit von Speicheldrüsentumoren wurden die bislang durchgeführten DNA-Analysen vielfach an Paraffin-eingebettetem Material durchgeführt [1,2,5,7,14,16,28,33,40,45,46]. Die Sensitivität für den Nachweis aneuploider Zellpopulationen ist bei dieser Technik jedoch stark eingeschränkt, für eine Zellzyklusanalyse ist sie kaum geeignet [29].…”

“…Dieser Befund wird durch nahezu alle DNA-durchflusszytophotometrischen Untersuchungen bestätigt [2,5,12,14,16,17,40], auch wenn einige Untersuchungen von einem höheren Anteil maligner, aneuploider Speicheldrüsentumoren berichten [11,30,46] …”