Clinical correlation of hormone receptor status in epithelial ovarian cancer

Cytoplasmic estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR) levels were measured in ovarian epithelial carcinomas from 37 patients using a dextran-coated charcoal assay prior to any treatment. Sixty-eight percent of the tumors were ER positive, forty-nine percent were PR positive, forty-one percent were positive for both receptors, and twenty-seven percent were negative for both receptors. Receptor status in epithelial ovarian carcinomas was found to have no clinical significance when correlated with age, parity, race, cigarette smoking, surgical stage, histologic type, histologic grade, progression-free interval, or patient survival.