Proliferation of human renal cell carcinoma studied with in vivo iododeoxyuridine labelling and immunohistochemistry.

Tumor cell proliferation is one interesting cell biological parameter of possible predictive value for prognosis. In the present study 176 tumor and 33 kidney cortex samples from 33 patients with renal cell carcinoma were studied after immunohistochemical detection of in vivo labelled iododeoxyuridine. The tumors had a mean labelling index (LI) of 1.06 +/- 0.59%, significantly different from LI of kidney cortex tissue 0.08 +/- 0.09% (p < 0.001). There was a tendency towards increasing LIs at higher clinical stages. No correlation was found between LI and tumor size. A significant difference existed for LIs between diploid and aneuploid tumors (p = 0.037). Within the limited number of patients with a relatively short follow-up, Kaplan-Meier curves indicated that LI might provide prognostic information.