FISH studies of urinary cells of patients with bladder cancer

Generally, bladder cancers are characterized by complex and numerous chromosome changes that vary from tumor to tumor. Nevertheless, certain chromosome changes recur with a consistency, (eg, +7, +8, -9, and -Y). In applying fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) studies to urinary cells in bladder cancer we chose probes for these chromosomes as well as those for chromosomes 10 and 11. A probe for the X chromosome was used for female patients in place of the Y. In the present study, we show that FISH of urine samples can detect the presence of cancer cells in transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) of the bladder of any grade and stage, including carcinomas in situ (CIS). We analyzed 27 samples from 25 patients (three were from the same patient); 24 samples were recurrent or newly diagnosed TCC and 3 were CIS. Our results show that FISH of urine samples is a reliable test for the detection of bladder cancer cells, regardless of the grade and stage of the tumor, and that a correlation appeared to exist between invasiveness of the tumor and the number of abnormalities in such tumor.