Cell Kinetics And Dna Distribution Patterns Determined By Flow Cytometry In Early And Advanced Gastric Cancer

It seems that humor progression from early gastric cancer to more advanced stages is accompanied by changes in biologic features of tumor cells, such as DNA ploidy and proliferative activity. There is little information concerning alterations in cell kinetics and DNA ploidy patterns with progression of gastric cancer. We retrospectively examined data on 165 patients with early gastric cancer (EGC) and 494 with advanced gastric cancer. All patients underwent gastric resection, Special focus was placed on S-phase fraction and DNA ploidy determined by flow cytometry, There were no differences in terms of age, sex and sites of tumors between EGC and advanced gastric cancer. In the advanced gastric cancer significantly more patients had lymph node involvement (57% vs 18%), Seven out of 165 (4.2%) EGC were aneuploid versus 63 of 494 (13%) advanced gastric cancer (P =.0048), Mean S-phase fraction was significantly lower in EGC (15.24 +/- 7.87) than in advanced stages (18.03 +/- 10.24) (P =.0003), Fifteen patients with EGC relapsed, The proliferative activity of tumors that recurred were significantly higher compared to tumors that did not (18.57 +/- 5.04 versus 13.16 +/- 6.14, P =.0009), while only one of these was aneuploid, Tumor progression from EGC to more advanced stages seems to be accompanied by changes in biologic features, such as S-phase fraction and DNA ploidy.