[Comparative study of single-point method and multipoint method in the measurement of estrogen receptor and progesterone receptor in breast cancer].

A comparative study of estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PgR) by single-point method and multi-point method in dextran coated charcoal assay (DCC) was carried out in 50 and 47 cases of breast cancer, respectively. Taking 10 fmol/mg protein as the positive value, the conformation rate of both methods in ER measurement was 96.0% (48/50) with r = 0.978 by linear regression analysis (P less than 0.001). In PgR measurement, the conformation rate of both methods was 95.7% with r = 0.988 (P less than 0.001). Statistically, the difference between single-point method and multi-point method in the ER and PgR measurements was not significant (P greater than 0.5) both in rank-sum test and in paired t-test. The authors suggest that ER and PgR of breast cancer samples be measured with single-point method for its simplicity and less tumor tissue required.