Sinophobic Growth in Oestrogen Receptor-Negative Metastatic Breast Cancer

Abstract

The mode of growth of tumour cells from primary breast carcinoma in the axillary nodes is shown to be related to the oestrogen receptor (ER) status of the primary tumour. ER-positive primaries are described as tending to show sinophilic growth, the tumour cells spreading along the nodal sinuses; while the ER-negative are sinophobic, spreading more diffusely in the lymphoid tissue.

Prognostic value of continuous variables in breast cancer and head and neck cancer. Dependence on the cut-off level

“…Moreover, there exists a wide variation in results among laboratories using the same method (Borjesson et al, 1987). There is a convention using 10 fmol mg-' cytosol protein to separate between ER-negative and ERpositive tumours (McGuire et al, 1975), although many institutions use lower (Stewart et al, 1982;Hartveit et al, 1983;Mason et al, 1983;Howat et al, 1985;Bonneterre et al, 1988) or sometimes higher (Vollenweider-Zerargui et al, 1986) values. There is greater assay variability for PR (Jordan et al, 1983) and here again the cut-off values are variable.…”