Background/Objectives: Breast cancer is one of the main causes of cancer fatality in women. Among iranian females, it is the most common cancer which tends to affect younger ones. Molecular biomarkers such as stroid receptors, HER2/neu and p53 are valuable in evaluation the clinical course, prognosis and treatment decisions. The correlation of mentioned factors with clinicopathological features and survival of breast cancer has been assessed in this study.
Materials and Methods: 339 women with a primary diagnosis of breast cancer from 2000 to 2006 were included. They were evaluated for tumor characteristics. The content of the steroid hormone receptors and expression of HER2/neu and p53 was also examined by immunohistochemistry assay. patients were followed up to March 2007.
Results: From patients arrived at this study, 46.6%, 43.8%, 51.7% and 36.1% were positive for ER, PR, HER2/neu and p53 respectively. ER considerably correlated with PR (P=0.000). There was a similar relation between HER2/neu and p53 (P=0.041).
HER2/neu expression significantly related with grade (P=0.016). p53 had considerable reverse relation with axillary lymph node involvement and primary distant metastasis (P=0.010 and P=0.023 respectively). A significant association was found between PR and lymph node involvement (P=0.038). There was not another considerable relation between such biomarkers and clinicopathological features. Furthermore, survival analysis detected no correlation between molecular biomarkers and recurrence free survival.
Conclusion: This study present the pattern of prognostic biomarkers in breast cancer for the first time in north-east of Iran and suggest to conduct larger studies regarding other effective variables include demographic ones.