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
. 2018 Apr 19;18(1):446.
doi: 10.1186/s12885-018-4371-0.

Incidence, pattern and prognosis of brain metastases in patients with metastatic triple negative breast cancer

Jia Jin  1   2 , Yu Gao  1   2 , Jian Zhang  1   2 , Leiping Wang  1   2 , Biyun Wang  1   2 , Jun Cao  1   2 , Zhimin Shao  2   3 , Zhonghua Wang  4   5   6
Affiliations

Incidence, pattern and prognosis of brain metastases in patients with metastatic triple negative breast cancer

Jia Jin et al. BMC Cancer. .

Abstract

Background: To identify the incidence, recurrence pattern and prognosis of brain metastases (BM) among women with metastatic triple negative breast cancer (mTNBC) treated consecutively at a single institution during a 7-year period.

Methods: Patients with histologically confirmed mTNBC were retrospectively identified. The incidence of BM as first site of recurrence and the cumulative BM incidence were computed. We used the Cox proportional hazards model to identify the univariate and multivariate factors associated with survival.

Results: Four hundred thirty three patients were included with a median overall survival (OS) of 21.6 months after median follow-up for 48.1 months. BM was found in 29% (127/433) of the patients and about a quarter (32/127) of BM was first recurrence. The cumulative incidence of BM at 1 and 2 years was 17 and 25%, respectively. The median time from the diagnosis of extracranial metastases to BM was 10 months. Median OS following a diagnosis of BM was 7.3 months. The longer median OS from time of first recurrent BM was noted compared with those of subsequent recurrent (17.3 vs 6.3 months, p = 0.008). However, patients with first recurrent BM were associated with shorter OS compared with those without BM (17.3 vs 22.1 months, p = 0.006). The independent factors that increased BM death risk were > 3 brain lesions, no BM-directed treatment, subsequent recurrent BM, symptomatic BM and uncontrolled extracranial metastasis.

Conclusions: Patients with mTNBC have a high incidence of early BM with subsequent poor survival. The findings lend support to consideration of screening imaging of the brain for mTNBC patients.

Keywords: Brain metastases; Prognosis; Recurrence pattern; Triple-negative breast cancer.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study was conducted inaccordance with the ethical standards of the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Ethics Committee of Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center. Written human subject consent was not necessary, because this study was based on the retrospective chart review. The institution review board of Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center approved the waiver.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interest.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Overall survival of patients with mTNBC. a Kaplan–Meier survival curve of 433 patients with mTNBC. b Kaplan–Meier survival curve of 127 patients with BM from TNBC. c Kaplan-Meier plots illustrating survival of patients had BM initially involved and those subsequently involved. The longer median survival from time of brain metastases diagnosis that is seen in the first recurrent BM compared with the subsequent recurrent BM (17.3 vs 6.3 months, p = 0.008). d Kaplan-Meier plots illustrating survival of patients with first BM recurrence presence and those absence. Patients with BM initial presence were associated with shorter OS (17.3 vs 22.1 months, p = 0.006)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Siegel RL, Miller KD, Jemal A. Cancer Statistics, 2017. CA Cancer J Clin. 2017;67(1):7–30. doi: 10.3322/caac.21387. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Martin AM, Cagney DN, Catalano PJ, Warren LE, Bellon JR, Punglia RS, Claus EB, Lee EQ, Wen PY, Haas-Kogan DA, Alexander BM, Lin NU, Aizer AA. Brain Metastases in Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer: A Population-Based Study. JAMA Oncol. 2017;3(8):1069–1077. doi: 10.1001/jamaoncol.2017.0001. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Wen PY, Loeffler JS. Brain metastases. Curr Treat Options Oncol. 2000;1(5):447–458. doi: 10.1007/s11864-000-0072-3. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Lin NU, Bellon JR, Winer EP. CNS metastases in breast cancer. J Clin Oncol. 2004;22(17):3608–3617. doi: 10.1200/JCO.2004.01.175. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Quigley MR, Fukui O, Chew B, Bhatia S, Karlovits S. The shifting landscape of metastatic breast cancer to the CNS. Neurosurg Rev. 2013;36(3):377–382. doi: 10.1007/s10143-012-0446-6. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms

Substances