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European Journal of Dermatology

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Immunohistochemical evaluation of the probability of skin metastasis in gastric cancer Volume 9, issue 3, April- May 1999

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Authors
Department of Dermatology, Surugadai Hospital, Nihon University, 1-8-13, Kanda Surugadai, Tokyo, 101-0062, Japan.

We report the case of a 56-year-old man with advanced gastric cancer that manifested as multiple subcutaneous nodules. Histology showed irregularly shaped cells with large nuclei and it also showed frequent mitotic figures clustered throughout the dermis. To predict whether metastasis was likely to occur, we performed a controlled study using gastric cancer cells from patients with or without metastases. Tumor cells that had metastasized showed more positive staining for Ki67, PCNA and p53 than those that had not metastasized, although there were no marked differences between the reactivities of these 2 groups for factor VIII related antigen, CEA, EGF, or p21 staining. We conclude that immunohistochemical staining for Ki67, PCNA or p53 might be very useful in predicting the possible risk of metastasis of cancer cells.