1987 Volume 26 Issue 3 Pages 381-385
Correlation between the amount of hormone receptor (HR), especially estrogen receptor (ER) and PAS reactivity in imprint smears were examined in 74 patients with three common types of breast cancer. The amount of HR was measured by the RIA method. Correlation between the HR amount and the degree of atypicality of neoplastic cells, histological type of tumor or menopausae was also examined.
The number of cases showing strongly PAS positive activity or mosaic pattern was 42 (82.4%) of 51 ER positive cases and those indicating PAS negative activity or weakly positive pattern was 17 (73.9%) of 23 ER negative cases. There is significant difference between ER amount and PAS reactivity (p<0.001). In the ER positive cases, the number of progesterone receptor (PgR) positive cases were 33 and most cases showed strongly positive reactivity in PAS reaction, but most of PgR negative cases indicated mosaic pattern in PAS reaction. ER negative cases showed severe atypia having large nuclei and multinuclei. On the otherhand, ER positive and PgR positive cases showed no or slightly cell atypia. No significant relationship was observed between the HR amount and histological types of neoplasms. The number of ER positive cases was 20 (76.9%) of 26 postmenopausal patients and 27 (67.5%) of 40 premenopausal cases.
