Oestrogen and progesterone receptors in ovarian carcinoma.

Ovarian cancer accounts for 5% of all cancer deaths in Western countries and is the most frequent cause of gynaecologic cancer mortality. The incidence varies with age between 1% and 14% with a peak rate in the eighth decade, and in the majority of cases, the disease has already spread beyond the pelvic cavity at time of diagnosis. Although in the last decades the introduction of cisplatin-based chemotherapy resulted in an improvement of patient survival, the percentage of recurrent disease is high even in those patients who achieve a complete response to chemotherapy, so that more than 80% of patients with advanced stage of disease die within 5 years (Copeland & Gershenson 1986). At present the prognostic characterisation of ovarian cancer patients, based on clinico-pathological parameters, such as stage, histology, grade and residual tumour after surgery, seems to be inadequate, since patients with similar clinico- pathological characteristics often experienced different clinical outcome. Therefore, the identification of biological factors related to tumour aggressiveness could be relevant in order to identify patients with different prognosis and chance to respond to chemotherapy, thus allowing the selection, at time of initial diagnosis, of high risk patients needing more aggressive therapy or alternative treatment, and a closer follow-up. Among the biological parameters proposed as possible prognostic factors in ovarian cancer much attention has been focused on endocrine factors and especially on steroid hormones and their receptors. Although several epidemiological and in vitro evidences have demonstrated that, similarly to breast and endometrial cancer, ovarian cancer cell biology could be influenced by the biochemical pathways promoted by the interaction of estrogens and progesterone with their specific receptors (ER, PR) conflicting data have been reported about the possible clinical role of ER and PR in this neoplasm. This review is aimed: a) to summarise the informations about the influence of steroid hormones and their receptors in the biology of ovarian cancer in in vitro models as well as in primary tumours;b) to investigate the association of steroid hormone receptor expression with the clinico-pathological parameters and the clinical outcome in ovarian cancer patients.c) to report the data of the literature about the rationale and the results of endocrine therapy in ovarian cancer.