Analysis of DNA content in invasive pancreatic cancer : special reference to the relationship between the 4c exceeding rate of DNA content and pathological findings

The effectiveness of the analysis of DNA content in invasive pancreatic cancer to obtain a prognosis is controversial, as the DNA ploidy alone does not yield an accurate prognosis. On the other hand, image cytometry offers advantages over flow cytometry in that only tumor cells are used for DNA analysis and image now cytometry is a reliable method to obtain accurate prognoses of patients with various cancers. In the present study, we retrospectively examined the DNA content of histological paraffin-embedded tumor materia] obtained fron] 35 patients (17 male, 18 female) who had been pancreatectomized because of invasive pancreatic cancer. For DNA analysis, all specimens were studied using the Quantitative Ploidy Analysis Program in the CAS 200 Image Analysis System (Cell Analysis System, Inc., Lombard, IL). In the present study, the DNA ploidy pattern, the DNA index (Dl), and the 4c exceeding rate (ER) were calculated by analyzing the DNA histogram in each case, The main purpose of our study was to investigate the relationship between those three parameters and pathological findings in invasive pancreatic cancer.
The present study demonstrated that there was no significant relationship between the DNA ploidy pattern or the Dl and pathological findings. However, there was. a significant (P<0.05) relationship between the 4c ER and pathological findings such as tumor size, neural invasion, and tumor differentiation.
In conclusion, the 4c ER of the DNA histogram in the ICM correlated with an aggressive pathological state represented by tumor size, neural invasion, and tumor differentiation, and the analysis of the 4c ER provides important prognostic information regarding invasive ductal carcinoma of the pancreas.