Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) content of carcinomas and prognosis in human breast cancer

DNA content was estimated in 705 breast carcinomas from patients with stage I or stage II disease undergoing mastectomy, to investigate whether it would predict the clinical course of the disease. The patients were then followed for up to 84 months during which time 166 of them developed recurrences. There were no statistically significant differences in the DNA content of carcinomas between stage I and stage II patients or between those with various numbers of involved nodes. The tumours from pre-menopausal patients as a group had significantly higher DNA content than those from post-menopausal cases. There was a gradual rise in DNA content with the malignancy grade of the carcinoma which showed significant differences between Grades I and III and between II and III. Life-table analyses showed that the measurement of DNA would not be an aid to prognosis. Furthermore, when the data were stratified according to menopausal status, stage, malignancy grade or numbers of lymph nodes involved, the results indicated that these estimation do not add significantly to the information obtained through established prognostic factors. Survival data were available on III patients with recurrent disease. There were no significant differences in tumour DNA content between short- and long-term survivors. It is concluded that these measurements seem unlikely to be a prognostic factor in human breast cancer.