Abstract
It is recognized that well-differentiated adenocarcinoma of the prostate responds well to anti-androgen therapy. However, well-differentiated adenocarcinoma is sometimes hormone independent and poorly differentiated adnocarcinoma sometimes has good response to hormone therapy. Therefore, cell-cycle analysis of fresh tissue of prostate cancer using flow cytometry was assessed as a possible prognostic factor for prostate cancer. Cell cycle analysis was performed for 35 cases with the prostate cancer to be compared with pathological grades, clinical stages and patients' ages. The results were as follows : 1) The ratio of G0/G1 status of prostate cancer was smaller than that of the benign prostatic hypertrophy, and the ratio of G2/M was greater in reverse. 2) The DNA histogram patterns showed a diploid pattern in 21 cases (60.0%), aneuploid pattern in 10 cases (28.6%) and tetraploid pattern in 4 cases (11.4%) . All cases of the benign prostatic hypertrophy and the well-differentiated adenocarcinoma showed diploid patterns. All cases of the tetraploid pattern were poorly differentiated adnocarcinomas. The most severe cases of adenocarcinoma experienced the greatest number of occurrence of aneuploid DNA values. 3) Patients with a DNA index 1.0 were older than those with a DNA index over 1.0. It was suggested that the cell cycle of prostate cancer was different from that of benign prostatic hypertrophy. The DNA histogram of prostate cancer correlated well with the pathological grade, and the DNA index seemed to correlate with the period of initial clinical cancer. These results suggest that the determination of cell cycle analysis could be used for diagnosis of prostate cancer, especially for cell grading.
