HISTOCHEMICAL DISTRIBUTION OF CA-125 AS A PROGNOSTIC INDICATOR IN PATIENTS WITH SEROUS OVARIAN-CANCER

The study comprises 66 patients with stage Ill and IV serous ovarian carcinoma While the percentage of CA-125 positive cells and the staining intensity showed no correlation to patient survival, the pattern of CA-125 distribution, membranous versus cytoplasmic, was significantly correlated to survival. In accordance with other observations on switching of the antigen reaction f rom membrane to cytoplasm with increasing grade of atypia or malignancy, patients with membrane positive CA-125 tumors had a significantly better prognosis than did patients with CA-125 in the cytoplasm. Furthermore, there was excellent agreement between, on the one hand, the binding pattern of CA-125 and, on the other, the ploidy of the tumor cells and the HGI histopathologic grading index, both previously shown to be of prognostic significance.