Ploidy disturbances in endometrial and ovarian carcinomas. A review

A survey of DNA and chromosome aberrations in human endometrial and ovarian carcinomas is presented, including data obtained by chromosome analysis, absorption cytophotometry and flow cytometry. Nearly all of the cancers showed some structural or numerical chromosomal abnormalities. Endometrial carcinomas were reported to have a near-diploid DNA content in two-thirds of the cases, as opposed to ovarian carcinomas, in which only one-third of the tumors were near diploid. DNA aberrations in tumors of both origins seemed to be associated with an unfavorable prognosis, indicating that DNA measurements may supply a valuable additional criterion for biologic malignancy. Evaluable data on ploidy correlated to histologic subtypes was not available; in general, the number of patients in each study was small. Tumors of low differentiation tended more often to be aneuploid, but this was not a consistent finding. Further research comparing disease stage, tumor grade and tumor type in larger series of patients is therefore mandatory.