Flow Cytometric DNA Analysis in Gastric Cancer and its Relationship to the Clinicopathological Findings -Comparison between Differentiated and Undifferentiated Adenocarcinoma-

Yuji Tanaka

The Second Department of Surgery, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine

To determine the biological characteristics of tumor cells, the DNA ploidy pattern was analyzed by flow cytometry in 89 gastric cancers initially resected in our unit between 1978 and 1983. Among the 47 differentiated gastric carcinomas, 22 (47%) were diploid, and the remaining 25 (53%) were aneuploid; therefore this group was almost evenly divided into two types. However of the 42 undifferentiated carcinomas, 29 (69%) were diploid, and 13 (31%) were aneuploid; there tended to be more diploid tumors among the undifferentiated carcinoma. Among the differentiated carcinomas, the aneuploid frequency increased with increase in the clinicopathological stage of cancer, and the survival rates demonstrated that patients with aneuploid tumors had a significantly poorer outcome than those with diploid tumors (p<0.05). A strong correlation was noted between the DNA ploidy pattern and the outcome in the differentiated carcinomas. Measurement of the amount of nuclear DNA by flow cytometry appears to be a good indicator for estimating the degree of biological malignancy, and this seems to be especially true for differentiated gastric carcinoma.

Key words
DNA ploidy pattern, flow cytometry, histopathology of the gastric cancer

Reprint requests
Yuji Tanaka Department of Surgery, Tenryu Byoin National Sanatorium
4201-2 Oro, Hamakita, 434 JAPAN

Accepted
April 17, 1991

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