Approximately 10% of patients with glioblastoma survive more than 2 years after diagnosis. Distinguishing these patients from those who died within 2 years of diagnosis is clinically significant. We studied the MIB-1 labeling index (LI) and DNA topoisomerase II alpha LI of glioblastomas from 34 patients who lived for more than 2 years after diagnosis and of glioblastomas from 34 age- and sex-matched control patients who died within 2 years of diagnosis. The means of MIB-1 and topoisomerase II alpha LIs of the group with a better outcome were lower. With 35 as the cutoff point for the MIB-1 LI and 26 as the cutoff point for the topoisomerase II alpha LI, both MIB-1 and topoisomerase II alpha LIs were related significantly to survival. Our study showed that both MIB-1 and topoisomerase II alpha could help predict long-term survival of patients with glioblastomas. Multivariate analyses revealed that MIB-1 was a better prognostic marker than topoisomerase II alpha.
