Hormone receptors expression in ovarian cancer taking into account menopausal status: a retrospective study in Chinese population

Ovarian cancer is a major gynaecological cancer with different subtypes and studies have suggested that estrogen receptor (ER) or progesterone receptor (PR) positivity are associated with better clinical outcomes. Furthermore, the clinical outcomes of ovarian cancer are better in Asian compared to Caucasian. To date, studies investigating the ER or PR positivity in all subtypes of ovarian cancer, including borderline epithelial, are limited. In this retrospective study we investigated ER and PR positivity in Chinese women with malignant epithelial ovarian cancer (n=577), sex cord-stromal tumor (n=26) and borderline epithelial ovarian cancer (n=98) taking into account menopausal status. The positivity of ER (>85%) or PR (>58%) was higher in serous and endometrioid carcinoma of malignant epithelial ovarian cancer than that in mucinous and clear-cell carcinoma (<19% of ER or 24% of PR). The majority of serous carcinomas of borderline epithelial ovarian cancerwere ER or PR positive, but in contrast less than 33% of mucinous carcinomas of borderline epithelial ovarian cancerswere ERor PR positive.Furthermore, there was no association between the ER or PR positivity and menopausal status in both malignant and borderline epithelial ovarian cancer. We also found that the age at diagnosis with ovarian cancer was younger in Chinese women. Our data suggest that ER or PR positivity in Chinese women with ovarian cancer is similar to that of other ethnicities reported in literature, suggesting that the better clinical outcomes seen in Asian may be associated with other factors such as age at diagnosis of ovarian cancer.