Prognostic significance of abnormal p53 accumulation in primary, resected non-small-cell lung cancers

This study was conducted to evaluate the prognostic significance of p53 abnormalities in primary, resected non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Methodologic validation of immunohistologic detection of p53 abnormalities in routine pathology sections was assessed using 31 lung cancer specimens for which p53 gene status was known from our previous molecular biologic studies. Applying the optimized cutoff value, we evaluated the prognostic significance of p53 abnormalities in an independent cohort of 208 NSCLC patients with complete follow-up data, whose resections were consecutively performed between January 1984 and December 1988.

Immunohistologic detection of p53 abnormalities appeared to be reliable and showed approximately 90% concordance with the p53 gene status. Using the selected cutoff value of 10%, 46% of 208 NSCLCs showed p53 abnormalities. There was no relationship between p53 abnormalities and clinical outcome in the entire cohort, which represented all histologic subtypes of NSCLC (P = .58). Based on the reasoning that the influence of p53 abnormalities may have been obscured by distinct biologic roles depending on histologic subtypes, we also separately analyzed subsets of patients with adenocarcinomas (n = 100) and with squamous cell carcinomas (n = 88) and found that it may be a useful prognosticator only in adenocarcinoma patients (P = .04).

p53 abnormalities are not a significant prognostic factor in primary, resected NSCLC when all histologic subtypes are combined, but may be a useful prognosticator for adenocarcinomas. Additional studies are warranted for further evaluation, specifically of adenocarcinomas.