Molecular markers associated with node negative breast cancer

Abstract

Breast cancer is the most frequent female cancer in the world, both in terms of incidence and mortality. In Brazil, it is the female neoplasm of highest incidence, being most frequent in the South Region of the country (67%). Recently, a huge interest in the identification of molecular markers with significant prognostic value in breast cancer has been demonstrated. In this study, both p53 and c-erbB-2 proteins were evaluated in 61 node negative breast cancer patients. These patients were diagnosed from 1992 to 1998 at the Araujo Jorge Hospital, Goiânia-Goiás. Paraffinembedded tissues of the patients were obtained from the Histopathology Laboratory and analyzed by immunohistochemistry. The expression of p53 protein and c-erbB-2 were evaluated by streptoavidin-biotin complex (SABC). Statistical analysis was performed using the Chi-Square test, with SPSS package. No significant association between p53, c-erbB-2 and clinicopathological features was detected; however, there was a significant association between p53 and c-erbB-2 expression (p=0.02). The Kaplan-Meier survival curves were used to estimate overall survival curves and comparisons were made using log-rank statistics. According to the results, p53 and c-erbB-2 expression was not significantly associated to clinicopathological features or overall survival curves of the patients, suggesting that further markers should be investigated in order to clarify the natural history and development of node negative breast cancer.