ARE JAPANESE AND EUROPEAN GASTRIC-CANCER THE SAME BIOLOGICAL ENTITY -AN IMMUNOHISTOCHEMICAL STUDY

To examine the suggested biological difference between Japanese and Br itish gastric cancers, immunohistochemistry was used to demonstrate ei ght markers of biological activity in a matched series of 40 Japanese and 33 British cases. There were no differences in the proportions of Japanese and British tumours positive to epidermal growth factor, epid ermal growth factor receptor, transforming growth factor alpha, cripto or p53. A significantly greater proportion of British tumours were po sitive to c-erbB-2 whilst a significantly greater proportion of Japane se tumours were positive to nm23. British tumours had a significantly greater mean proliferating cell nuclear antigen proliferation index th an Japanese tumours. These differences could be clinically significant .