Loss of heterozygosity in clinical stage IB cervical carcinoma: relationship with clinical and histopathologic features.

Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) has been shown to be an important prognostic factor in a variety of malignant neoplasms. The relationship between LOH and established histopathological prognostic factors in cervical carcinoma has not been examined. We studied LOH in 58 FIGO stage IB cervical cancers treated by radical hysterectomy. In a randomly selected subset of 37 of these cases, LOH was examined using markers for all 41 chromosomal arms. Seventy-six percent of the 58 cases and 95% of the extensively studied cases showed LOH at one or more loci. The three most common sites of LOH were 3p21, 6p24-p23, and 11q23.3. In the extensively studied group, LOH on 11q was associated with extensive lymphvascular space invasion (P = .009) and less deeply invasive tumor (P = .042). There was a trend for tumors with LOH on 11q to recur, but this was not statistically significant. No correlation between the presence of LOH on 3p or 6p and lymphvascular space invasion or tumor depth was present. There was no correlation between the number of sites of LOH or between the presence of LOH on 3p, 6p, and 11q and the presence of metastatic tumor in regional lymph nodes, histologic type (squamous v nonsquamous), tumor differentiation, maximum tumor size, degree of inflammation, pattern of invasion, mitotic rate, or clinical recurrence. In summary, tumors with 11q LOH may behave in a more aggressive fashion. Future studies of LOH in cervical carcinoma should include histopathological prognostic information so that the relationship between LOH and these factors can be determined on larger numbers of patients.