Enhancement of lymphocytic SCE frequencies in patients with ovarian cancer.

Sister chromatid exchange (SCE) frequencies were studied in normal and mutagen-treated lymphocyte cultures from patients with ovarian carcinoma and controls. The mean SCE value per cell in normal cultures from the patients was 7.84 which was significantly higher than 6.41 SCEs per cell observed in the controls (p less than 0.01). Similar SCE values obtained for mutagen (mitomycin C, MMC) treated cultures were somewhat lower for patients as compared to the controls, however, the difference was not significant. Cellular kinetics, expressed as average generation time (AGT), was suppressed in lymphocyte cultures from ovarian carcinoma patients as compared to the controls (p much less than 0.05). It was concluded that although baseline SCE rates in lymphocytes of patients with ovarian carcinoma were higher as compared to the controls, they have very limited application as a marker malignancy.