DNA-PLOIDY AND HELIX-POMATIA LECTIN-BINDING AS PREDICTORS OF REGIONALLYMPH-NODE METASTASES AND PROGNOSTIC FACTORS IN BREAST-CANCER

This study was designed to evaluate whether DNA ploidy and/or Helix po matia lectin (HPA) staining would be useful for predicting regional ly mph node metastases and patients' prognosis in 106 patients with invas ive breast cancer. The combination of DNA ploidy and HPA staining corr elated better with regional lymph node metastases than DNA aneuploidy or HPA staining alone. DNA ploidy and HPA staining in combination corr elated strongly with overall and disease-free survival by univariate a nalysis. However, the prognostic significance of DNA ploidy and HPA st aining in combination was lost in multivariate analysis when regional lymph node metastases were introduced into the models. This emphasized the relationship in survival between regional lymph node metastases a nd the combination of DNA ploidy and HPA staining. We therefore conclu ded that the combination of DNA ploidy and HPA staining might provide prognostic information for breast cancer patients in whom regional lym ph node dissection has not been performed.