Detection Of Aneuploidy In Chromosomes 3,7,9 And 17 In Bladder Cancer Patients Using Urovysion Assay

Background: Cystoscopy is considered up till now the gold standard as well as urine cytology for diagnosis and follow up of urinary bladder cancer patients. Cystoscopy is an invasive inconclusive technique while cytology have low sensitivity. Therefore search for a more sensitive, non-invasive highly reliable method is important. Aim of the study: To assess the diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of Urovysion to be used as a non-invasive tool for early detection of bladder cancer patients. Furthermore, to assess its relationship with histopathological stages and grades of the disease. Subjects and methods: This study was conducted on 30 patients with urinary bladder cancer( Group I) which were subdivided according to cancer stages and grades into subgroups and 15 diseased control patients (Group II). One urine sample was taken from each patient for Urovysion assay and another sample taken for urine cytology. Results: Urovysion showed higher positive results in (Group I) than urine cytology. In (Group II) the latter did not miss any negative case while urovysion showed only one false positive case. Moreover, Urovysion results revealed significant association with both bladder cancer histopathological stages and grades while urine cytology showed significant association with tumor grades only. Conclusion: Urovysion; both by itself and in combination with urine cytology; offers a sensitive, reliable and non invasive approach to bladder cancer diagnosis. Urovysion is associated with invasiveness of bladder cancer from stage Tis, T1 to T4 and from grades G1 to G3. Thus, urovysion assay can be used as an important diagnostic and prognostic indicator of this disease