Background: Some epithelial ovarian carcinomas tend to occur more frequently in certain families. This clustering may be due to a genetic predisposition, but the role of inherited susceptibility in all families with multiple cases of ovarian carcinoma is currently unresolved. Studies characterizing familial ovarian carcinomas are few.
Methods: From a population-based study of 559 patients with epithelial ovarian carcinoma, 27 families with 2 or more ovarian carcinoma cases occurring in first-degree relatives were identified. Histopathology, ploidy, and immunohistochemically detected p53 and HER-2/neu expression in these tumors were examined.
Results: The mean age of the patients with familial ovarian carcinoma was 56.7 years. Approximately 67% of the tumors were either serous or undifferentiated adenocarcinomas. The percentage of aneuploid tumors was 46%, that of p53 positive tumors was 51%, and that of HER-2/neu positive tumors was 69%. When the families were divided into families with cases of breast carcinoma in addition to ovarian carcinoma cases and/or ovarian carcinoma in 2 consecutive generations (12 families) and families with ovarian carcinoma occurring in sisters only without cases of breast carcinoma (15 families), no differences were noted in the frequency of any of the studied variables.
Conclusions: Familial ovarian carcinomas do not appear to differ from sporadic ovarian carcinomas with regard to patient age at presentation, histopathology, ploidy, and immunohistochemically detected p53 expression. Immunohistochemically detected HER-2/neu expression was found to occur more frequently in familial ovarian carcinomas than has been reported in sporadic ovarian carcinomas.