[Histological investigation of prostate cancer treated with hormonal agents]

The histological diagnosis of prostate cancer treated with hormonal agents is often difficult because of various morphological changes induced by androgen ablation. Immunostaining of cytokeratins may be useful to prevent the underdetection of cancer cells. We examined prostatic specimens with histological diagnosis of 11 pTO patients who had undergone neoadjuvant endocrine therapy followed by radical prostatectomy. Anti-cytokeratin antibody, AE1/AE3 was used to detect the prostatic epithelial cells. Anti-cytokeratin antibody, 34/3 E12 was used to detect the prostatic basal cells. The loss of basal cells indicates the acini to be cancer. The immunostaining with these antibodies revealed that 2 out of 11 cases had residual cancer and were not pTO. The immunostaining of cytokeratins was useful to detect the residual prostatic cancer after endocrine therapy.