title: Increased androgen receptor expression in serous carcinoma of the ovary is associated with an improved survival.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Altered androgen hormone homeostasis and androgen receptor (AR) activity have been implicated in ovarian carcinogenesis but the relationship between AR expression in ovarian cancer and clinical outcome remains unclear.
  
  
  METHODS
  In this study, the prognostic impact of AR expression was investigated using immunohistochemistry in tissue microarrays from 154 incident cases of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) in the prospective, population-based cohorts Malmö Diet and Cancer Study and Malmö Preventive Project. A subset of corresponding fallopian tubes (n = 36) with no histopathological evidence of disease was also analysed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  While abundantly expressed in the majority of fallopian tubes with more than 75% positive nuclei in 16/36 (44%) cases, AR was absent in 108/154 (70%) of EOC cases. AR expression was not related to prognosis in the entire cohort, but in the serous subtype (n = 90), AR positivity (> 10% positive nuclei) was associated with a prolonged disease specific survival in univariate (HR= 0.49; 95% CI 0.25-0.96; p= 0.038) and multivariate (HR= 0.46; 95% CI 0.22-0.97; p= 0.042) analysis, adjusted for age, grade and clinical stage.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  AR expression is considerably reduced in EOC as compared to fallopian tubes, and in EOC of the serous subtype, high AR expression is a favourable prognostic factor. These results indicate that assessment of AR expression might be of value for treatment stratification of EOC patients with serous ovarian carcinoma.
authors.affiliation: Center for Molecular Pathology, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Lund University, and Skåne Regional Laboratories, Malmö, Sweden. karin.jirstrom@med.lu.se.
authors.forename: Björn
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Nodin
authors.forename: Nooreldin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Zendehrokh
authors.forename: Jenny
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Brändstedt
authors.forename: Elise
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Nilsson
authors.forename: Jonas
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Manjer
authors.forename: Donal J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Brennan
authors.forename: Karin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Jirström