Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2015 May;6(3):375-82.
doi: 10.1016/j.jare.2014.11.007. Epub 2014 Nov 21.

A mini review on cancer of unknown primary site: A clinical puzzle for the oncologists

Nicholas Pavlidis  1 , Hussein Khaled  2 , Rabab Gaafar  2
Affiliations
Review

A mini review on cancer of unknown primary site: A clinical puzzle for the oncologists

Nicholas Pavlidis et al. J Adv Res. 2015 May.

Abstract

Cancer of unknown primary (CUP) is a well recognized clinical syndrome, accounting for 3-5% of all malignancies. It is characterized as a disease with an early dissemination of metastases without a primary detected site after extensive laboratory and clinical investigations. CUP is divided into the favorable and unfavorable groups based on histopathological and clinical manifestations. Adenocarcinoma of various differentiations is the commonest histopathological subtype. Favorable groups are treated with local or systemic treatment and some of them are enjoying long-term survival. On the contrary, unfavorable groups are treated with empirical chemotherapy having usually a dismal prognosis. Gene-profiling microarray diagnosis has a high diagnostic sensitivity, but its predictive or prognostic value remains uncertain.

Keywords: Cancer; Diagnosis; Treatment; Unknown primary.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

None
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Overall survival between CUP favorable and unfavorable patients treated at Ioannina University Hospital from 1995 to 2011. Favorable (formula image) and unfavorable (formula image).
None
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Pavlidis N., Pentheroudakis G. Cancer of unknown primary site. Lancet. 2012;379:1428–1435. - PubMed
    1. Frost P. Unknown primary tumours: an example of accelerated (type 2) tumor progression. Basic Life Sci. 1991;57:233–237. - PubMed
    1. Klein C.A. Parallel progression of primary tumours and metastases. Nat Rev Cancer. 2009;9(4):302–312. - PubMed
    1. Kamposioras K., Pentheroudakis G., Pavlidis N. Exploring the biology of cancer of unknown primary: breakthroughs and drawbacks. Eur J Clin Invest. 2013;43(5):491–500. - PubMed
    1. Stoyianni A., Goussia A., Pentheroudakis G., Siozopoulou V., Ioachim E., Krikelis D. Immunohistochemical study of the epithelial–mesenchymal transition phenotype in cancer of unknown primary: incidence, correlations and prognostic utility. Anticancer Res. 2012;32(4):1273–1281. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources