Table 1.
Study demographics in patients diagnosed with borderline ovarian tumor, ovarian cancer or a benign ovarian tumor.
Figure 1.
Proportion of positive results from the Antinuclear Antibodies (ANA)-screening of benign vs. malignant samples, Overall 40% of the patients with malignancies were positive for one or more ANA specificity (cf. also Table 2).
This is a highly significantly fraction when compared to the patients with benign condition, both in the complete data set (A) and when comparing between age-matched groups (B).
Table 2.
The frequency of different Antinuclear Antibodies (ANA)-patterns in sera from patients with epithelial ovarian cancer and benign pelvic conditions.
Figure 2.
Mortality and presence of Antinuclear Antibodies (ANA).
In (A) is shown the frequency of detection of ANA in the group of patients with epithelial ovarian cancer (n = 127) depending on their survival status (alive or dead). There is a statistically significant (p = 0.03) increase in the frequency of ANA in the group where the patients are dead. In (B–D) Kaplan-Meier survival curves are depicted. The graph in (B) indicates the survival of the 127 patients of whom 76 were negative for IgG ANA and 51 were positive. In (C) survival data grouped according to ANA status for the 71 patients with FIGO stage III cancer are shown. (D) shows survival of patients with CA-125 values below the median (469 U/mL) stratified according to ANA-status while (E) shows the same data for patients with CA-125 values above the median. NS, non-significant. Upward lines indicate instances of censored patients.
Figure 3.
Antinuclear Antibodies (ANA) specificities.
Examples of ANA-patterns of strongly positive sera staining in a cytoplasmic (A) and a speckled (B) pattern. In (C) is shown the distribution of the main types of ANA patterns as well as the signal strength in the benign and the malignant group. Strongly positive samples are almost only seen in the group with malignancy.
Figure 4.
Relationship between ANA-staining intensity and histological grade of tumor (high, moderate, and poorly differentiated).
While grading had no significant relationship with ANA-positivity of any specificity the presence of a speckled ANA pattern was significantly correlated with moderate-poor differentiation grade when compared with highly differentiated tumors (p = 0.04).
Figure 5.
No correlation between serum-CA-125 values and the presence and intensity of ANA.
The immunofluorescence score is depicted as a function of CA-125 values for the samples from benign (red symbols) and malignant cases (green symbols). Cut-off for positivity in the CA-125 test is 35 U/mL. All patients with benign ovarian tumors and epithelial ovarian cancers are included in this figure.