Pathobiologic characteristics of hereditary breast cancer

Clinical and pathological features of BRCA1 associated carcinomas in a hospital-based sample of Dutch breast cancer patients

“…Our results showed the same differences, but did not reach statistical significance. The trend towards a higher proportion of p53-positive tumours among BRCA1 carriers is in agreement with the results from several other studies which all reported statistically significant differences between mutation carriers and non-mutation carriers (Crook et al, 1997;Lynch et al, 1998;Armes et al, 1999;. HER2/neu expression was infrequent and did not differ between the BRCA1-related tumours and the controls, which is in line with previous findings (Lynch et al, 1998).…”

“…In BRCA1 associated tumours receptors for oestrogen and progesterone were expressed less frequently than in controls. The finding regarding oestrogen and progesterone expression is in line with previous publications (Johannsson et al, 1997;Karp et al, 1997;Loman et al, 1998;Lynch et al, 1998;Verhoog et al, 1998;Armes et al, 1999). Absence of oestrogen and progesterone receptor expression has been even suggested as a potential indicator for the presence of a BRCA1 germline mutation (Brown et al, 1999;Eisinger et al, 1999).…”

“…We did not find any differences regarding tumour type. In line with other studies (Eisinger et al, 1996;Marcus et al, 1996;Johannsson et al, 1997;Karp et al, 1997;Lakhani et al, 1997;Armes et al, 1998;Lynch et al, 1998), among the BRCA1-mutation carriers, a higher proportion of high-grade tumours with a higher mitotic rate, tubule formation and nuclear grade was observed. In a recent study in which differences between sporadic breast cancers and cancer involving BRCA1 mutations were studied by means of a multifactorial model, a higher mitotic count has been identified as a key feature of the histologic phenotype of breast cancers in BRCA1 mutations carriers (Lakhani et al, 1998).…”

“…In many studies, it was observed that BRCA1-associated breast cancers are more frequently histologic grade 3 (Eisinger et al, 1996;Marcus et al, 1996;Johannsson et al, 1997;Karp et al, 1997;Lakhani et al, 1997;Armes et al, 1998;Lynch et al, 1998) and that they express receptors for oestrogen and progesterone less frequently (Johannsson et al, 1997;Karp et al, 1997;Lynch et al, 1998;Loman et al, 1998Verhoog et al, 1998Armes et al, 1999). Both features are usually associated with a poorer prognosis.…”

“…The majority of studies examined tumours from families with a high incidence of breast cancer (Eisinger et al, 1996;Marcus et al, 1996;Johannsson et al, 1997;Lakhani et al, 1997;Loman et al, 1998;Lynch et al, 1998;Verhoog et al, 1998), from patients with an early onset breast cancer (Armes et al, 1998(Armes et al, , 1999, or from specific populations with founder mutations (Karp et al, 1997). Moreover, in most studies in which the cases were selected from breast cancer families, the controls were breast cancer patients without a positive family history but no definite proof of a negative BRCA1 mutations status (Eisinger et al, 1996;Verhoog et al, 1998) or an unknown family history (Marcus et al, 1996;Johannsson et al, 1997;Lakhani et al, 1997).…”