The implication of DNA content and S-phase fraction in oral carcinomas with and without metastasis.

Flow cytometry DNA analysis was performed on fresh tissue samples of 90 primary lesions and 32 metastatic lymph nodes of squamous cell carcinomas of the oral cavity and related regions to elucidate the characteristics of tumors with metastatic potency. The incidence of aneuploidy for carcinomas with metastasis was 67%, which was significantly higher than the 44% of carcinomas without metastasis, and aneuploid carcinomas (39%) had a higher tendency to metastasis than diploid carcinomas (20%). The incidence of aneuploidy and metastasis was related to the T classification, the degree of differentiation, and the histologic grade of malignancy. The incidence of aneuploidy and mean DNA index of metastatic lesions were 31% and 1.12, respectively, and the values were significantly lower than the 67% and 1.30 of the corresponding primary lesions. The results indicate that the chance of evolution of metastatic cell lines is higher in aneuploid carcinomas than diploid carcinomas, possible because the former is more heterogeneous than the latter, but most of the cell lines causing lymph-node metastasis are diploid cell lines. Metastatic lesions had a lower S-phase fraction than primary lesions, indicating that a high S-phase fraction does not always reflect the presence of metastatic cell lines.