The expression and clinical significance of GADD45A in breast cancer patients

Abstract

Background: Growth arrest and DNA-damage-inducible protein 45 alpha (GADD45A) was previously found to be associated with risk of several kinds of human tumors. Here, we studied the expression and clinical significance of GADD45A in breast cancer.

Methods: We performed an immunohistochemical study of GADD45A protein from 419 breast cancer tissues and 116 adjacent non-neoplastic tissues.

Results: Significantly high GADD45A expression were observed in breast cancer tissues compared with adjacent non-neoplastic tissues (P < 0.001) and were independently correlative with estrogen receptor negative (P = 0.028) and high Ki-67 index (P < 0.001). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis revealed that patients with high GADD45A expression levels had a worse long-term prognosis in triple negative breast cancer (P = 0.041), but it was not an independent prognostic factor in multivariate analysis (P = 0.058).

Conclusions: GADD45A expression levels are significantly correlative with estrogen receptor status and Ki-67 index in human breast cancer. Patients with triple negative breast cancer might be stratified into high risk and low risk groups based on the GADD45A expression levels.

Keywords: Breast cancer; GADD45A; Immunohistochemistry; Prognosis.

Figure 1. GADD45A expression levels are elevated in human breast cancer samples compared to adjacent non-neoplastic tissues.

Representative images from immunohistochemical analysis of GADD45A on (A) high expression in breast cancer tissues, (B) low expression in breast cancer tissues, (C) high expression in adjacent non-neoplastic tissues and (D) low expression in adjacent non-neoplastic tissues.

Figure 2. Kaplan–Meier curve of overall survival in relation to GADD45A protein expression.

(A) breast cancer; (B) TN subtype breast cancer.