DNA ploidy and helix pomatia lectin binding as predictors of regional lymph node metastases and prognostic factors in breast cancer.

This study was designed to evaluate whether DNA ploidy and/or Helix pomatia lectin (HPA) staining would be useful for predicting regional lymph node metastases and patients' prognosis in 106 patients with invasive breast cancer. The combination of DNA ploidy and HPA staining correlated better with regional lymph node metastases than DNA aneuploidy or HPA staining alone. DNA ploidy and HPA staining in combination correlated strongly with overall and disease-free survival by univariate analysis. However, the prognostic significance of DNA ploidy and HPA staining in combination was lost in multivariate analysis when regional lymph node metastases were introduced into the models. This emphasized the relationship in survival between regional lymph node metastases and the combination of DNA ploidy and HPA staining. We therefore concluded that the combination of DNA ploidy and HPA staining might provide prognostic information for breast cancer patients in whom regional lymph node dissection has not been performed.