Comparative Study Of Biological Markers Between Primary And Axillary Lymph Nodes Metastatic Focuses Of Breast Cancer

Backgroud & Objective: The expression of estrogen receptor(ER) and progesterone receptor(PR) in breast cancer can direct the Endocrine therapy. Herceptin therapy for metastatic breast cancer is commonly based on over-expression of C-erbB2 in primary breast cancer. The expression of Ki67 is very important for the prognosis of breast cancer. But studies comparing receptor statuses in primary and metastatic focuses of the same patient are limited. This study was designed to investigate discordance of ER, PR, C-erbB2 and Ki67 statuses between primary and metastatic focuses of breast cancer.Methods: Immunohistochemistry assay was used to detect expression of ER, PR, C-erbB2 and Ki67 in primary and axillary lymph nodes metastatic focuses of 54 cases of breast cancer which have the metastasis in axillary lymph nodes. Results: Overall, the percentage of discordant marker status in the primary tumour and its metastatic lymph nodes was 19.1% for ER, 11.8% for PR, 14.8% for C-erbB2, 11.1% for Ki67. All the position rates of them have no significant difference between primary and axillary lymph nodes metastatic focuses.Conclusion: 1) No biological marker had 100% concordant results, but all of the discordances were not significant. 2) Although some discordant cases might be explained by the limitations of the IHC technique, future studies aiming to evaluate the predictive value of biological markers in the adjuvant therapy of breast cancer should take into account a possible difference in the four biological markers expression between the primary and the metastatic sites.