[Sensibility and specificity of N-myc oncogene with respect to other prognostic factors in 15 neuroblastomas].

Several biologic features of tumor cells correlate closely with a favorable or unfavorable outcome. To aid in assessing correlation in the various number of prognostic factors including the age, stage, VMA/HVA ratios, and the serum levels of NSE and ferritin, the histopathological features, ploidy, partial monosomy for the short arm of chromosome 1, and the tumor N-myc gene copy number, are examined. We determined the sensitivity and specificity of classical markers above the amplification of the N-myc oncogene. A striking new observation is the positive correlation between genomic amplification and some prognostic factors (stage, ferritin, NSE, pathologic anatomy and 1p deletion.