METHODS: Clinicopathological data were retrieved from the archived formal pathology reports for surgical specimens diagnosed as invasive ductal carcinoma, NOS. Microvessels were immunohistochemically stained with anti-CD34 antibody and quantified as microvessel density.
RESULTS: At least 50% of 94 cases of invasive breast ductal carcinoma in the study were advanced stage. The majority had poor prognosis factors such as tumor size larger than 50mm (48.9%), positive lymph node metastasis (60.6%), and tumor grade III (52.1%). Higher percentages of estrogen and progesterone receptor negative cases were recorded (46.8% and 46.8% respectively). Her-2 overexpression cases and triple negative breast cancers constituted 24.5% and 22.3% respectively. Significantly higher microvessel density was observed in the younger patient age group (p=0.012). There were no significant associations between microvessel density and other clinicopathological factors (p>0.05).
CONCLUSIONS: Majority of the breast cancer patients of this institution had advanced stage disease with poorer prognostic factors as compared to other local and western studies. Breast cancer in younger patients might be more proangiogenic.
METHODS: In this study, an mtDNA polymorphism at nucleotide position 10398 was screened in 101 Malay female patients with invasive breast cancer and 90 age-matched healthy female controls using minisequencing analysis.
RESULTS: The Malay women with the 10398G variant showed a significantly increased risk of invasive breast cancer (OR = 2.29, 95% CI 1.25-4.20, P = 0.007). Immunohistochemistry analysis was conducted to investigate the effect of this polymorphism on the levels of apoptosis in breast cancer cells. The level of Bax (a pro-apoptotic protein) expression was significantly higher than that of Bcl-2 (an anti-apoptotic protein) in patients carrying the G allele (P = 0.016) but not in those carrying the A allele (P = 0.48).
CONCLUSION: Based on these findings, we propose that the mtDNA 10398 polymorphism may be a potential risk marker for breast cancer susceptibility in the Malay population.