Breast cancer research and treatment
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Breast Cancer Res. Treat. · Apr 2011
Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative StudyImmunohistochemistry compared to cytosol assays for determination of estrogen receptor and prediction of the long-term effect of adjuvant tamoxifen.
The purpose of this study is to compare immunohistochemistry (IHC) and cytosol-based assays for determination of estrogen receptor (ER) and prediction of response to adjuvant tamoxifen treatment in postmenopausal women with early-stage invasive breast cancer. The Stockholm Breast Cancer Study Group conducted a randomized trial during 1976 through 1990 comparing adjuvant tamoxifen versus control. The patients were stratified according to tumor size and lymph node status in high-risk and low-risk groups. ⋯ Among patients with ER-expressing tumors, tamoxifen resulted in significantly better recurrence-free survival irrespective of the method (IHC: HR, 0.53, P < 0.001; cytosol: HR, 0.53, P < 0.001). The effect on overall survival was not statistically significant probably due to the limited sample size. Both IHC and cytosol assay accurately predict long-term response to adjuvant tamoxifen.
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Breast Cancer Res. Treat. · Apr 2011
Mutation analysis of BRIP1 in male breast cancer cases: a population-based study in Central Italy.
Breast cancer (BC) in men is rare compared with BC in women, but its incidence is increasing along with attention toward this uncommon disease. Although with some differences, male and female BC share similar genetic predisposition factors, including BRCA1/2, CHEK2, and PALB2 mutations. As other BRCA1/2 functionally related DNA repair genes, such as CHEK2 and PALB2, BRIP1 is considered a moderate-penetrance BC susceptibility gene. ⋯ Of the three coding variants, one was a silent variant (E879E) and two resulted in amino acid substitution (R264W and P919S) showing a putative pathogenic role by in silico analysis. However, further analysis of tumor-associated loss of heterozygosity and the frequency of variant alleles, tested in 203 male population controls, suggested a neutral effect for both of these variants. Overall, our results indicate that BRIP1 variants may not play a relevant role in MBC predisposition.