Androgen receptor expression in molecular subtypes of breast cancer and its relationship with the clinicopathological features / 临床与实验病理学杂志

ABSTRACT

Purpose To investigate the expression of androgen receptor ( AR) in molecular subtypes of breast cancer and its relation-ship with clinicopathological features. Methods The expression of estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), HER-2, CK5/6, CK14 in breast cancer was detected by EnVision immunohistochemical staining, and they further be divided into 84 Luminal A subtypes, 27 Luminal B subtypes, 14 HER-2 overexpression subtypes, 11 Basal-like subtypes, and 17 Normal-like subtypes, respec-tively. The distribution of AR in 5 molecular subtypes and its relationship with clinicopathological factors, such as age, histopathologi-cal grading, tumor size, lymph node status and clinical staging, were analyzed. Results In 153 cases of breast cancer, the positive rates of AR expression were 73. 20%, Luminal A was the majority ( 62. 50%) in 5 molecular subtypes. In the HER-2 negative and positive breast cancer, the positive rates of AR expression were 75. 00% and 68. 29% and the difference between the two groups was no statistical significant (P=0. 196). Of the 153 breast cancers, 23 (15. 03%) were triple-negative breast cancers (ER-, PR- and HER-2-), 15 (9. 80%) breast cancers were negative for ER, PR and AR, 8(5. 23%) breast cancers were quadruple negative (ER-, PR-, AR- and HER-2 -) . There was significant difference of the expression of AR in ER/PR positive and negative breast cancer (P=0. 001),it was positively correlated with ER/PR protein expression (rs =0. 874, P=0. 024). The difference of AR ex-pression between histological grading was statistically significance ( P=0. 022 ) , the expression of AR was negatively correlated with histopathologic grading (rs = -0. 201, P=0. 013). The positive expression of AR was related to tumor size, but not correlated with lymph node metastasis ( P=0. 211 ) and clinical staging ( P=0. 065 ) . Conclusion The expression of AR in breast cancer tissues and its relationship with clinicopathological features may provide a basis for the further improvement molecular typing of breast cancer, and also provide the theoretical basis for clinical treatment and judging prognosis.