Effects of Short-Term Tamoxifen Administration in Patients with Invasive Cervical Carcinoma

LAURA M. VARGAS ROIG; HECTOR LOTFI; JESÚS E. OLCESE; GIOCONDA LO CASTRO; DANIEL R. CIOCCA

ANTICANCER RESEARCH

INT INST ANTICANCER RESEARCH

Año: 1993 vol. 13 p. 2457 - 2464

0250-7005

 Cervical cancer is not considered a hormone-respon-sive tumor in spite of the presence of estrogen receptors (ER) and progesterone receptors (PgR) in some of them. Endocrine treat-ments have not achieved clinical responses, however, tamoxifen has been reported to induce PgR and to inhibit cell growth of many cervical carcinoma cell fines. In this study we investigated whether tamoxifen administration affects the histopathological characteristics of cervical cancer and the expression of ER, PgR, HER-2/neu and p53 protein. Nineteen patients with invasive cer-vical cancer free of previous treatments were studied. The niph-enylethylene antiestrogen tamoxifen was given orally during 10 days (20 or 40 mg/day). Pre- and post-tamoxifen biopsies were evaluated using slides stained with hematoxylin and eosin and immunostained (ER, PgR, HER-2/neu, p53, PCNA, keratin, heat shock protein 27,000 daltons). Estrogen receptors were pre-sent in 37% and PgR in 16% of the biopsies from untreated patients. Only one case that was PgR-negative before tamoxifen administration showed weak PgR-positivity following antiestrogen administration. No obvious changes were observed in ER, HER-2/neu and p53 proteins. A statistically significant decrease in the number of mitotic figures was obtained in 16% (3/19) of the post-tamoxifen biopsies and two of them showed higher differentiation. The results showed that tamoxifen did not induce changes in estrogen-regulated proteins in cervical cancer. However, the data showed that certain cervical carcinomas had changes in their proliferation and differentiation levels following tamoxifen administration. These findings suggest that tamoxifen may ffect some cervical cancer tissues by a hormone-independent mechanism(s).