Background: The management of breast cancer is frequently based on hormone receptors [estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR)] and Human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2). However, hormone receptors and HER2 status may change throughout tumor progression. The aim of this work is to correlate hormonal receptors with HER2 expression and also their correlation with other routinely used characteristics such as patient's age, tumor size, tumor grade, vascular space invasion and lymph node status in order to determine their prognostic value in infiltrating ductal carcinoma breast patients.
Methods: Seventy-eight paraffin-embedded infiltrating ductal carcinoma tissues from patients of mean age 50.33 (28 to 84) years were collected and studied using immunohistochemistry to evaluate RE, RP and HER2 status. In this retrospective study, samples were collected between January 2010 and December 2013 at the Children's Hospital of Rabat, Morocco.
Results: In our study, the prevalence of ER, PR expression and HER2 were 73,1%, 69,2% and 19,2% respectively. None of these biomarkers showed correlation with age, Tumor size and Lymph node. There was no association between HER2 expression and hormone receptors expression as well as their different phenotypes (ER/PR). On the other hand, we have found that HER2 was significantly associated with the presence of vascular space invasion (P=0.015), while the relationship between hormonal receptors expression and vascular space invasion was found to be not significant. Out of 78 cases, 50 patients expressed positively and simultaneously ER and PR. This relationship between ER and PR was significant (P<0.0001). In addition, the grade of tumor in our study was significantly correlated to the expression of ER (P=0.028), as well as HER2 and ER in Grade of tumor II (P=0.025).
Conclusions: Our results provide valuable prognostic information to guide the decision-making process for treatment of patient with infiltrating ductal carcinoma.