Prognostic factors help the clinician by providing information on the likely site of initial recurrence, predicting survival time after dignosis, the clinical course after relapse has occured, and the expected response to medical therapy
In order to investigate the prognostic significance of c-erbB-2 overexpression, sections of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embeded tissue from 60 primary breast cancers were stained immunohistochemically against the c-erbB-2 oncoprotein. Positive
reaction
indicative of cerbB-2 overexpression was observed on tumor cells in 25(41.1%)samples.
The overexpression of c-erbB-2 oncoprotein was not correlated with tumor size, lymph node involvement, estrogen and progesteron receptor status, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) status, histologic type, menopausal status, but significantly
correlated with nuclear grade. Overexpression of c-erbB-2 protein was more common among tumors of poor nuclear grade(grade 1)-16%-than those of good nuclear grade (grade 3)-25%-acording to Black's nuclear grading system. Postoperative clinical
survey
demonstrated a high tendency of recurrence rate and shorter survival time of patients with positive staining tumors as compared with those with negative staining tumors to overexpression of c-erbB-2 oncoprotein
In conclusion. These data suggest that the overexpression of c-erbB-2 oncoprotein may be valuable for the predication of biologically high malignant potential and the detection of corbB-2 oncoprotein in tumor section may have prognostic value in
human
breast cancer.
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