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In a 2007 study by Peyromaure et al, the investigators examined preoperative plasma levels of VEGF-A in patients undergoing radical prostatectomy (RP) for localized prostate cancer (N=100) and determined the expression of VEGF-A in all postoperative specimens using immunohistochemistry. Peyromaure and colleagues found a strong correlation between the expression of VEGF-A in prostate cancer tissue and the Gleason score (histologic grade) of cancer: VEGF-A expression was significantly higher in patients with a high Gleason score on RP specimen (P=0.01).4
A Gleason Score is determined by microscopic analysis of a prostate cancer biopsy. A grade (on a scale of 1 to 5) is assigned to both the most common and second most common tumor patterns. The two grades are added together to produce a score from 2 to 10, with higher scores reflecting poorer differentiation. Although they both add to 7, a 4+3 score is considered more aggressive than a 3+4 score due to the higher grade of the more common tumor pattern.
