Clinico- pathological features and out come of triple negative breast cancer

Abstract EN

Background : Triple-negative breast cancer is a distinct entity of breast cancer, which is associated with aggressive behavior and poor prognosis, and typically do not express hormone receptors (estrogen receptor-negative, progesterone receptor-negative) and negative HER-2 and characterized by high proliferation rate and BRCA1 gene dysfunction.

Currently patients with this type of tumor cannot be managed with existing targeted treatments (trastuzumab and hormonal therapy).

Aim of study : To evaluate the clinico-pathological features, and outcomes of women with triple-negative breast cancer and compared with other types of breast cancer.

Method : A retrospective study was done in 2009 for all women with breast cancer treated at the Al-Sadder teaching hospital in AL-Najaf from January 2006 to December 2008, the pathological reports were reviewed, details about the age at diagnosis, tumor grade, lymph node status, pathologic tumor size in centimeters, the paraffin-embedded blocks was requested for antibody staining in the laboratory of Al-Sadder teaching hospital .The clinico-pathological features of tumor were compared with other groups using a t test for means and x2 statistic for frequencies.

Results : From 232 women with breast cancer (12.5 %) had triple-negative breast cancers and mostly are in the younger age groups, a high proportion of triple negative (86 %) were found in Body mass index more than 30, and (62 %) of them had positive lymph node, and according to the size of tumor (13.8%) of the triple-negative tumors were more than 5 cm, and (62 %) of them had grade III tumors.

A higher proportion of patients with triple negative had BRCA1 (20.68 %), and (65.5 %) of them had history of contraceptive pills, with higher proportion of distant recurrence (17.2 %) and mainly to brain metastasis (10.2 %), and there is no statistical significant in the local recurrence between triple negative breast cancer and others (6.8 %) and (6.4 %) respectively.

Conclusions : Triple-negative breast cancers have a more aggressive clinical course than other forms of breast cancer.