Breast cancer research and treatment
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Breast Cancer Res. Treat. · Jan 2005
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical TrialTumor-specific VEGF-A and VEGFR2 in postmenopausal breast cancer patients with long-term follow-up. Implication of a link between VEGF pathway and tamoxifen response.
Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF-A) is considered a prognostic indicator for clinical outcome in breast cancer. Conflicting results nevertheless exist and there is a need for larger studies including untreated patients in order to clarify the importance of tumor-specific VEGF-A regarding prognosis as well as potential links to predictive treatment information. VEGF-A and its receptor, vascular endothelial growth receptor 2 (VEGFR2), were therefore analyzed by immunohistochemistry in postmenopausal breast cancers enrolled in a clinical trial where patients were randomized to adjuvant tamoxifen treatment (n = 124) for 2 years or no treatment (n = 127) with a median follow-up of 18 years. ⋯ Among patients with estrogen receptor (ER) positive (fraction > 10%) tumors, there was a statistically significant tamoxifen response in VEGF-A negative tumors at both 10-year and 18-year disease-free survival (DFS), contrasting to VEGF-A positive tumors who had no beneficial effect of tamoxifen. A treatment-interaction variable indicated a marked difference in tamoxifen response depending on VEGFA-status in terms of DFS at 10 and 18 years of follow-up, p = 0.046 and p = 0.039, respectively. VEGFR2 status did not yield significant predicitve information for tamoxifen response in patients with ER fraction > 10%, whereas in patients with ER fraction > 90% both VEGF-A and VEGFR2 status were associated with tamoxifen treatment effect.
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Breast Cancer Res. Treat. · Jan 2005
The effect of age, race, tumor size, tumor grade, and disease stage on invasive ductal breast cancer survival in the U.S. SEER database.
To examine the effect of patient and tumor characteristics on breast cancer survival as recorded in the U.S. National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database from 1973 to 1998. ⋯ Tumor size, grade, race, and year of diagnosis all have significant constant effects on disease-specific survival in breast cancer, while the effects of age at diagnosis and disease stage have significant effects that vary over time.