Argyrophilic Nucleolar Organizer Regions (AgNOR) in Colorectal Cancer Patients : Correlation with Survival

摘要

The score of argyrophilic nocleolar organizer regions (AgNOR) was determined in 80 colorectal cancer patients, and the correlation between AgNOR score (dot number/nucleus) and survival was examined. The survival curve in 40 patients with low AgNOR score under the mean (3.81) of all the primary cancer lesions was significantly better than that in 40 patients with high AgNOR score over the mean, and the 4-year survival rate was 94% in the former and 71% in the latter. Significant differences between both patient-groups were found in 6 out of 11 background variables: deep cancer invasion, node and liver metastases, Dukes stage D, low grades of node dissection and curability C were significantly more in the patients with high AgNOR score than in the patients with low AgNOR score. These results suggest that the determination of AgNOR score in the cancer lesions is clinically used as a prognostic parameter in colorectal cancer but that the score is not an independent parameter from the clinicopathologic prognostic parameters.