Estrogen Receptor and Natural Course of Breast Cancer

Abstract

The tumors from approximately 50% of patients with breast cancer contained estrogen receptor (ER). ER appeared more often and at higher levels in the tumors of postmenopausal women. Eleven out of 12 patients who had multiple ER assays from various metastatic sites showed no significant discrepancies in ER values. ER level appears to decrease as the duration of metastatic cancer increase. Patients with ER in the tumor more frequently have bone metastases than those without ER. Visceral metastases occurred more often with ER negative patients and appeared to have a more malignant course with significant shorter survival.

Hormone-Related Factors Associated with Hormone Receptor Levels in Breast Cancer

“…In Mexican patients studied, the lymphocytic infiltration was not as frequent. It is accepted that ER levels in breast cancer tumors of postmenopausal women are higher than the values of ER obtained in premenopausal patients [21], probably due to the partial saturation of ER originating from different sources. Our studies show a correlation between age of the patients and ER levels; an inverse relation in PgR values was found.…”

“…The premenopausal patients with ER respond to the endocrine treatment in 30-50% of the cases, whereas in postmenopausal the response rate increases to 60-70% due to the higher levels of free receptors [22,21]. When the menstrual state is not considered, the response to the endocrine treatment is 34% in patients with PgR+ [23] and indicates that premenopausal patients with PgR+ could be candidates for endocrine treatment, since various studies have demonstrated that PgR+ is more important than the ER+ value for the election of the endocrine treatment to be estrogen dependent [17].…”

Prognostic factors in recurrent breast cancer: relationships to site of recurrence, disease-free interval, female sex steroid receptors, ploidy and histological malignancy grading

“…A number of authors have suggested that ER-positive tumours are more likely to recur in the bone and ERnegative ones in the viscera and the brain (Singhakowinta et al, 1976;Stewart et al, 1981;Clark et al, 1987 first recurrence is highly statistically significant in terms of the median concentrations of ER and PR in relation to the site of the first recurrence. The higher the concentrations of ER and PR, the more likely it is that the first recurrence will be in bone, whereas the lower the concentrations are, the higher the possibility of visceral metastases.…”

Patterns of Metastasis and Survival in Breast Cancer Patients: A Preliminary Study in an iranian Population

“…While the incidence of ER and PR+ patients were higher over the age of 50 in some studies (Balleine et al, 1999), Pourzand and coworkers (2011) reported younger women had more likely PR+ tumors. Hormone receptors may alter survival, and induce better response to therapy in receptor positive patients (Singhakowinta et al, 1976;Kohil et al, 1985). The absence of relation between receptor status and pattern of metastasis may be linked with unknown factors such as genetics and molecular mechanisms among Iranian patients.…”