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The relationships among estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PgR) and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) activity demonstrated by histochemical technique were studied in 85 cases of primary breast cancer. The ER positive rate was 71.8% and the PgR positive rate was 54.1%. A close correlation was obtained between the PgR and ER positivity or the semiquantitative grades. The G6PD activity in ER or PgR positive group was higher than that in the negative group. Moreover, the elevated G6PD activity was also correlated with the increased semiquantitative grades of ER or PgR. Our findings support the views that both PgR and G6PD are proteins induced by estrogen and may represent markers of functional ER in breast cancer. This suggests that simultaneous assay of ER, PgR and/or G6PD activity may be more reliable to predict the hormone dependence of the tumor.