Prognostic significance of MAPK, Topo IIα and E-cadherin immunoexpression in ovarian serous carcinomas

Ovarian cancer accounts for only 3% of all cancers in women but is the most lethal gynaecologic malignancy. Low-grade and high-grade ovarian serous carcinomas (OSCs) represent two different diseases with different prognosis, approaches to detection and treatment. We assessed correlation between, MAPK, topoIIα, E-cadherin immunoexpression and clinicopathological features with overall survival (OS) in OSCs. The study included 81 patients undergoing surgery between January 1995 and December 2005.Formalin fixed paraffin embedded tumour sections were reviewed and examined immunohistochemically using antibodies against MAPK, topoIIα and E-cadherin. The clinicopathological features included: age at surgery, stage according to the criteria of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), tumour grade, residual disease and vascular invasion. Only ten patients (12.3%) were diagnosed in early FIGO stage of disease. According to morphological criteria, 13.6% of tumor samples were low-grade OSCs and 86.4% were high-grade OSCs. On uninominal analysis, residual disease (p<0.001), E-cadherin (p<0.001), vascular invasion (p=0.002), high-grade morphology (p=0.025) and FIGO stage III-IV (p=0.010) were related to significantly shorter OS. We found no significant association between, MAPK and topoIIα expression and OS. Multinominal analysis revealed that only residual disease (p<0.001) and negative E-cadherin immunoexpression were useful independent predictors of unfavourable clinical outcome and shorter OS.