Expression of Progesterone Receptor,Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor and Cell Proliferation Associated Antigen in Human Uterine Leiomyoma

Objective To study the role of progesterone(P) and epidermal growth factor(EGF) in the growth of leiomyoma. Methods The tissues of leiomyoma were obtained from 30 uterine leiomyoma women undergoing hysterectomy, with the myometrium as control. PR, EGFR and Ki-67 contents of both normal uterine myometrium and leiomyoma were quantitalively analysed by SP method and image analyser system(IAS). Results (1) Contents of PR,EGFR and Ki-67 were significantly higher in leiomyoma than those in normal myometrium( P 0.001, P 0.0, P 0.05). (2) PR and Ki-67 contents of leiomyoma were signficantly higher than those of normal myometrium both in proliferative phase and secretory phase( P 0.05); EGFR contents were higher than those of nomal myometrium only in secretory phase( P 0.001), and showed no difference in proliferative phase( P 0.05). (3) PR and EGFR contents of leiomyoma were significantly higher in secretory phase than those in proliferative phase( P 0.01, P 0.001), while there were no difference in myometrium( P 0.05); Ki-67 contents of the two tissues in secretory phase were greater than those in proliferative phase( P 0.001). (4) PR and EGFR contents of leiomyoma were postively correlated with those of Ki-67(P0.001). Conclusions High PR, EGFR and Ki-67 contents in leiomyoma , may be the result of local high P, EGF concentrations, which indicates that P and EGF have important effects in the growth of leiomyoma , and EGF may act as a mediator of progesterone.