MIB‐1 proliferation index correlates with survival in pleural malignant mesothelioma

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Abstract
Aims: The purpose of this study was to establish whether the cell proliferation index assessed by the monoclonal antibody MIB‐1 would correlate with survival in pleural malignant mesothelioma.Methods and results: We studied a series of seven long‐term survivors with pleural malignant mesothelioma and a group of control cases with short‐term survival. All cases showed MIB‐1 positive cells, and labelling indices were expressed as percentage of cells with positive nuclear immunostaining by randomly counting 1000 tumour cells. A statistically significant difference was found between MIB‐1 values in the long‐term survival group and the control cases with short‐term survival.Conclusions: Our results indicate that the differences in biological behaviour of malignant mesothelioma in long‐term and short‐term survivors may be explained in part by differences in tumour growth fraction and that proliferation index could represent an important prognostic parameter for this tumour.