CORRELATION BETWEEN GENDER AND CYTOMORPHONUCLEAR CHARACTERISTICS IN HUMAN MELANOMAS AND IN-VITRO EVIDENCE OF SEX STEROID-INDUCED MODIFICATIONS IN THE MORPHONUCLEAR CHARACTERISTICS OF 3 HUMAN-MELANOMA CELL-LINES

The influence of gonadal steroids on human melanoma still remains a co ntroversial issue. The aim of our study was to investigate whether sex steroids may influence the biological characteristics of human melano ma. Such biological characteristics were monitored at the morphologica l level by means of computer-assisted microscope analysis of Feulgen-s tained nuclei, which provides 28 quantitative variables describing the nucleus morphometry (size, anisonucleosis level) and chromatin patter n. This methodology was used to characterize the morphonuclear feature s in a series of 69 human melanomas (from formalin-fixed paraffin embe dded tissues) including 28 male, 17 premenopausal and 24 postmenopausa l female patients, and to investigate the effect of two sex steroids ( 5-alpha-dihydrotestosterone [DHT] and 17-beta-oestradiol [E-2]) on thr ee human melanoma in vitro models - the HT-144, SK-MEL-28 and C32 cell lines. The results show that the morphonuclear characteristics of mel anoma originating from male and female patients are very distinct (P < 0.01). This difference is still more marked (P < 0.0005) when only pr emenopausal female patients are compared with male patients. The in vi tro data show that both DHT and E-2 are able to modify markedly (P < 0 .001 to P < 0.0001) the nucleus morphometry and chromatin pattern of t he three cell lines. Although the mechanism and the physiological outc ome are still unknown, the present work shows that there is in vivo an d in vitro evidence that the biological behaviour of human melanoma is Influenced by sex steroids.