Obstetrics & Gynecology Science

Original Article: Korean J Obstet Gynecol. 1997;40(10):2262-2268. Published online January 1, 2001.; Prognostic Significance of Bcl-2 Expression in Ovarian Cancers.; Gu Kong, Young Ha Oh, Chan Pil Park, Do Soo Nah, Yung Jin Moon, Kyung Tai Kim, Youn Yeoung Hwang, Jung Dal Lee; ¹Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea.
²Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, College of Medicine, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea.
³Department of Pathologyc, Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Samsung Medical Center, Korea.

Abstract: The protein encoded by the Bcl-2 proto-oncogene has been shown to prolong cell su-rvival by preventing cell death(Apoptosis) induced by many insults including cancer therap-eutic drugs. Recently many researches have elucidated the bcl-2 expression in several hu-man solid cancers. However, there is still a few avaiable data to determine the role of Bcl-2 expression in the ovarian carcinogenesis and its prognostic significance in ovarian can-cers. Hence, we examined the expression of Bcl-2 in 68 ovarian epithelial cancers using immunohistochemistry and determined whether Bcl-2 expression has prognostic significance in the ovarian epithelial cancers. We found Bcl-2 expression(>5% positive cell) in 31 patients(40%). Bcl-2 expression were exclusively negative in the mucinous type of the ovarian epithelial cancer. Bcl-2 exp- ression was not correlated with tumor stage(stage I & II vs III & IV, p=0.63). The patients with Bcl-2 positivity had lower recurrence rate than the patients with negativity at the se- cond look operation(p<0.01). Although there was a trend that the patients with Bcl-2 posi- tivity had better acturial survival than the patient with negativity, the stastical significance was not present(3 years acturial survival;+vs-;63%, 29%;p>0.05). These results sug- gest the Bcl-2 expression appears an early event in the ovarian carcinogenesis and has an inhibiting role in progression of ovarian tumor.

Keywords :Bcl-1 expression;Ovarian cancer;Recurrence and prognosis;Immunohistochemitry