Prognostic Significance of Hormonal Receptor Status of Malignant Ovarian Tumors

The objective of this study is to investigate hormonal receptor status of MOT (malignant ovarian tumor) and to evaluate its clinical and prognostic significance. Retrospective analysis of the case reports of 284 patients with MOT of different histogenesis, stages I-IV, and immunohistochemical study of paraffin-embedded tissues were performed. Hormonal receptor status of tumors with different morphology genesis was studied and hormonal receptor phenotype of serous OC (ovarian cancer) was determined. The analysis of correlation between the expression of steroid hormone receptors (receptors to estrogens (ER), progesterone (PR) and testosterone (TR)) in ovarian tumors, histological type of tumors and clinical morphological parameters were performed. Overall and relapse-free survival rates of the patients with serous OC depending on the hormonal receptor phenotype of the tumor were assessed. Presence of positive expression of steroid hormone receptors in serous OC (ER–66.4%, PR–63.4%, TR–53.0%), mucinous OC (ER–88.0%, PR–84.0%, TR–60.0%) and in sex cord stromal tumors (ER–74.1%, PR and TR–77.8%) is proved by correlation of all steroid receptors expression with morphology type of ovarian tumors (ER – r = 0.4; PR – r = 0.4; TR – r = 0.3; р < 0.05). Direct correlation between hormonal receptor phenotype of serous OC and the age period of the patients was established (r = 0.5; р = 0.002): postmenopausal women patients reported the most increased frequency of serous OC with positive hormonal receptor tumor phenotypes (52.4%), in particular during their late post-menopausal period (39.0%). Significantly low overall survival among the patients with positive hormonal receptor phenotype of serous OC was recorded (29.5 ± 3.4%) in comparison with the same score in the patients with negative phenotype of tumors (44.5 ± 3.7%) (р < 0.05). Multifactor analysis of Cox-regression model has defined that positive hormonal receptor phenotype of serous OC increases the risk of disease relapse (HR 1.4; 95.0% CI 1.1–1.7), significantly decreases overall survival rates in the patients (HR 1.4; 95.0% CI 1.1–1.8). Positive hormonal receptor status of MOT is an independent factor of unfavorable clinical progress of tumor process which can be regarded as the criterion for development of the methods of hormonal therapy application in complex treatment of the patients, and demands further large-scale multi-center studies in that direction.