Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010;65(10):1033-6.
doi: 10.1590/s1807-59322010001000019.

Triple-negative breast carcinomas are a heterogeneous entity that differs between young and old patients

Filomena M Carvalho  1 , Livia M Bacchi, Priscila P C Santos, Carlos E Bacchi
Affiliations

Triple-negative breast carcinomas are a heterogeneous entity that differs between young and old patients

Filomena M Carvalho et al. Clinics (Sao Paulo). 2010.

Abstract

Objective: To compare the frequency and immunohistochemical profiles of triple-negative breast carcinomas in younger and older women.

Methods and results: We selected patients diagnosed with triple-negative breast carcinomas. The groups examined were women who were 35 years old or younger between 1997 and 2007 (n = 74) and, for comparison, women who were 60 years old or older (n = 19, consecutive cases). All formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded tumor samples were reviewed and immunohistochemically stained for ER, PR, HER2, Ki-67 antigen, epidermal growth factor receptor, cytokeratin 5/6, p53, vimentin, CD117, and p63 using tissue microarrays blocks. Triple-negative breast carcinomas corresponded to 34.6% (74/213) of the carcinomas from the younger patients and 16.2% (19/117) of the carcinomas from the older patients (p = 0.002). No significant differences in the frequency of the basal phenotype were observed in the two patient groups based on CK5/6 and/or epidermal growth factor receptor expression (74.3% vs. 68.4%). However, triple-negative breast carcinomas in the older patients presented a higher frequency of CK5/6 expression compared to those of younger patients (42.1% vs. 9.6%; p = 0.005), whereas triple-negative breast carcinomas of younger patients had a higher expression level of epidermal growth factor receptor (71.6% vs. 47.3%).

Conclusions: These results show that there were significant molecular differences between the triple-negative basal-like breast carcinomas that were diagnosed in younger women and those that were diagnosed in older women. These findings may provide a basis for describing the more aggressive phenotype of the triple-negative breast carcinomas observed in younger women.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
A high‐grade invasive ductal carcinoma (A) with intense, diffuse CK5/6 immunoexpression (B).
Figure 2
Figure 2
A high‐grade invasive ductal carcinoma with numerous mitotic figures (A) and EGFR immunoexpression (B).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. El Saghir NS, Seoud M, Khalil MK, Charafeddine M, Salem ZK, Geara FB, et al. Effects of young age at presentation on survival in breast cancer, BMC Cancer. 2006;6:194. 10.1186/1471‐2407‐6‐194 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Anders CK, Hsu DS, Broadwater G, Acharya CR, Foekens JA, Zhang Y, et al. Young age at diagnosis correlates with worse prognosis and defines a subset of breast cancers with shared patterns of gene expression, J Clin Oncol. 2008;26:3324–30. 10.1200/JCO.2007.14.2471 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Fredholm H, Eaker S, Frisell J, Holmberg L, Fredriksson I, Lindman H. Breast cancer in young women: poor survival despite intensive treatment, PLoS ONE. 2009;4:e7695. 10.1371/journal.pone.0007695 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bhargava R, Striebel J, Beriwal S, Flickinger JC, Onisko A, Ahrendt G, et al. Prevalence, morphologic features and proliferation indices of breast carcinoma molecular classes using immunohistochemical surrogate markers, Int J Clin Exp Pathol. 2009;2:444–55. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Sorlie T, Wang Y, Xiao C, Johnsen H, Naume B, Samaha RR, et al. Distinct molecular mechanisms underlying clinically relevant subtypes of breast cancer: gene expression analyses across three different platforms, BMC Genomics. 200;7:127. 10.1186/1471‐2164‐7‐127 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types