[Clinical significance of TS and DPD activities in colorectal carcinoma as a predictive factor of UFT sensitivity].

We measured TS and DPD activities in 40 patients with colorectal cancer who had undergone surgical reduction in our department between May 1997 and April 1998, including 26 patients with preoperative UFT (450 mg/body/day) chemotherapy for 2 weeks, and evaluated the clinical significance of TS and DPD activities as predictive factors of UFT sensitivity. TS activity was collated with histological type from a clinical pathological examination (p = 0.0103). Also, the tendency for TS activity to become high with the stage was observed. According to the evaluation of pathological response, histological effectiveness greater than grade 2 was noted in 7.7%. The apoptosis index (AI) in tumors with preoperative UFT chemotherapy was higher than those without such treatment, which showed a higher correlation with DPD activity of tumor tissue than TS activity (p = 0.0465). Recurrence was seen in 7 cases (lung metastasis: 2, liver metastasis: 4, and local recurrence: 1) in the preoperative chemotherapy group. TS activity was high in all patients with recurrence. TS showed significantly high activity in patients with recurrence compared with the non-recurrence (p = 0.0034) patients. Therefore, these results suggested that activity of both TS and DPD was a key factor for anti-tumor effectiveness of UFT. In particular, TS activity was an important predictive factor for effectiveness of UFT in recurrences.