Background: Carcinoma of the fallopian tube is a rare gynecologic malignancy. Its histologic appearance and patterns of spread are similar to those of epithelial ovarian cancer. Alterations in the gene products of c-erbB-2 (HER-2/neu) and p53 are found commonly in ovarian tumors and may have prognostic relevance. The authors sought to determine whether tubal cancers are biologically similar to ovarian cancer with respect to the expression of these two molecular markers.
Methods: A cohort of 43 patients with fallopian tube cancer was studied. Immunohistochemical staining for c-erbB-2 and p53 was performed on pretreatment tissue blocks. Clinical information was available for all patients, with a median follow-up of 9 years. Clinicopathologic correlations were made.
Results: Nine patients had Stage I disease, 11 had Stage II disease, 18 had Stage III disease, and 5 had Stage IV disease, with a median survival was 65 months. c-erbB-2 overexpression was found in 11 cases (25.6%), and p53 positivity was noted in 26 cases (60.5%). Log rank survival curves showed no association between staining for c-erbB-2 or p53 expression and clinical outcome. A multivariate analysis identified patient age older than 65 years (P = 0.05) and Stage III or IV disease (P = 0.0065) as the only variables that predicted poor outcome.
Conclusions: Fallopian tube cancers are similar to ovarian cancer with respect to the proportion of tumors with abnormal expression of c-erbB-2 and p53. The authors could not demonstrate that these two molecular markers had prognostic relevance in this disease, but the size of their cohort was limited. However, the potential prognostic relevance of c-erbB-2 and p53 expression in tubal cancers should be pursued in a larger cohort.