p53 protein detected by immunohistochemistry as a prognostic factor in patients with epithelial overian carcinoma

Abstract

Background. The clinical significance of p53 suppressor gene nucleoprotein immunostaining in ovarian epithelial cancer has not been determined. Methods. p53 protein expression was studied by immunohistochemistry from paraffin embedded tissue in a series of 136 patients with malignant ovarian epithelial tumors. The median follow‐up time of the patients still alive was 10 years. Results. Sixty (44%) carcinomas stained clearly positive for p53 protein. Positive staining for p53 protein was associated with the serous histologic type (P = 0.0006), a higher than the median S‐phase fraction size determined by DNA flow cytometry (P = 0.02), and poor histologic grade of differentiation (P = 0.04), but not with the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage, age at diagnosis, or DNA ploidy. Cancers with positive staining had only 17% 5‐year and 9% 15‐year survival rates compared with 42% 5‐year and 36% 15‐year survival rates corrected for intercurrent deaths among the rest of patients (P = 0.002). In a multivariate analysis, positive p53 staining was associated with poor survival (relative risk of death, 1.8, 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.2–2.9) together with less than radical surgery (nonradical vs. radical: RR, 5.5; 95% CI, 2.2–13.6), and advanced FIGO stage (RR, 1.4; 95% CI, 1.0–2.0). Conclusion. Although p53 protein immunostaining is associated with several other prognostic factors in epithelial ovarian cancer, it may also have independent prognostic value in this disease.

p21/WAF1 expression as related to p53, cell proliferation and prognosis in epithelial ovarian cancer

“…p53 expression had also independent value in the multivariate recurrence-free analysis. Similar data have been observed in other studies, where p53-positivity has significantly predicted a poor survival (Henriksen et al, 1994;Klemi et al, 1995;van der Zee et al, 1995;Herod et al, 1996). However, contradictory results have been reported as well (Marks et al, 1991;Kohler et al, 1993a;Levesque et al, 1995).…”

A review of p53 expression and mutation in human benign, low malignant potential, and invasive epithelial ovarian tumors

“…19,20,[23][24][25]28,29,39,42,46,[49][50][51]53,58,[61][62][63][64]66,[71][72][73][74][76][77][78][79]82,83,85,87,90,95,97,99,103,104,106,109,110,114 Overall, p53 was detected in 39% of the Stage I/II tumors and 55% of the Stage III/IV tumors ( Again, although antibody specific estimates by tumor grade varied considerably (data not shown), a consistent pattern emerged. Overall, the proportion of tumors positive for p53 was lowest among the Grade 1 tumors and highest among the Grade 3 tumors (Fig.…”

“…The exons screened varied across studies (exons 5-8 in 14 studies; 26,36,42,48,58,59,93,103,116,119,127,131,132,134 exons 5-9 in 9 studies; 78 135 ). Among those studies in which exons 5-8 or exons 5-9 were evaluated, the p53 mutation prevalence estimates were similar: 42% (95% CI, 38 -46%) and 43% (95% CI, 47-59%), respectively.…”

Evidence for divergence of DNA copy number changes in serous, mucinous and endometrioid ovarian carcinomas

“…Of the known tumour-suppressor genes, the high incidence of p53 gene point mutations, present in some 50% of these tumours, is found in epithelial ovarian carcinomas (Marks et al, 1991). Such mutations have also been reported to occur in more than half of the serous carcinomas, in about one-third of the endometrioid carcinomas, but not in the mucinous carcinomas Received 10 September 1996 Revised 4 December 1996 Accepted 12 December 1996 Correspondence to: R Butzow (Klemi et al, 1995). However, this finding has not been seen in all studies (Bosari et al, 1993;Kohler et al, 1993).…”