Hye. Zhau et al., INTERRACIAL COMPARATIVE-STUDY OF PROSTATE-CANCER IN THE UNITED-STATES, CHINA, AND JAPAN, Journal of cellular biochemistry, 1997, pp. 182-186
The interracial differences of prostate cancer progression have long b
een documented; however, underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms
remain obscure. This study focuses on the histopathologic, immunohisto
chemical, biochemical, and molecular characterization of prostate canc
er tissues unselectively obtained from US, Chinese, and Japanese men.
Histopathologic analyses indicate that 74.5% of the prostate cancers i
n Chinese patients were poorly differentiated, compared with 28.6 and
32.8% of the prostate cancers in US and Japanese men, respectively. Th
ese differences cannot be attributed to patient age, clinical stage of
disease, or methods of tissue sampling. Furthermore, the high proport
ion of poorly differentiated prostate cancer tissues in the Chinese gr
oup was not related to the patients' access to medical service or thei
r geographic origins within China. We found significantly higher level
s of tumor angiogenesis (2- to 4-fold), serotonin (2- to 20-fold), and
bombesin (7- to 16-fold), but not chromogranin A, in tissue specimens
obtained from Chinese prostate cancer patients compared with those fr
om US and Japanese patients. We also found marked differences in p53 p
rotein accumulation among various ethnic groups. The p53 protein was f
requently detected in prostate cancer tissue specimens from Chinese (9
0.2%), but less frequently in US blade (3.7%), US white (17.4%), and J
apanese (7.1%) men. Further analysis of 31 prostate cancer tissues fro
m Chinese men indicated that mutational changes in the p53 gene occurr
ed between exons 5 and 8. (C) 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.