Exon 8 amplification of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in invasive breast carcinomas.

AIMS: The rate of EGFR amplification in breast cancer ranges between 0% and 15%. Recent studies have focused on the amplification status of cytosine-adenine (CA) repeats in intron 1 of the gene and correlated it with increased EGFR protein. The aim of this study was to investigate, for the first time, the significance of coding exon 8 amplification of EGFR in invasive breast cancer. METHODS AND RESULTS: We investigated, by means of real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR), the amplification status of exon 8 of the EGFR gene in 148 paraffin-embedded tissue sections, 115 with invasive breast carcinoma and 33 controls. Immunohistochemistry was utilized to detect EGFR and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) expression. Univariate and multivariate statistical analyses were performed for the evaluation of our results. EGFR amplification was observed in 7.8% of the patients, and EGFR was immunodetected in 9.6%. EGFR amplification was correlated positively with EGFR expression (P < 0.0001), HER2 expression (P = 0.023), coexpression of EGFR/HER2 (P < 0.0001) and nuclear grade (P = 0.047), and inversely with ER protein expression (P = .047). CONCLUSION: It appears that amplification of the coding sequence exon 8 exhibits similar biological behaviour to amplification of the regulatory sequence in intron 1, leading to elevated levels of EGFR protein.

Crohn's Disease of the Vulva: a Case Report.

Crohn's disease is a multi-systemic chronic inflammatory disease that can affect various organs besides the gastrointestinal tract such as joints, uvea, and the skin. Vulvar Crohn's disease is a rare entity occurring with vulvar lesions that show typical Crohn's disease granulomatous inflammation but are not contiguous with the gastrointestinal involvement. Vulvar Crohn's disease can be easily confused with other granulomatous diseases and awareness that such involvement may precede gastrointestinal symptoms must be raised. Few cases of vulvar Crohn's disease have been reported in the literature to date. Here, we report a case of a 43-year-old woman with a 6-month history of a vulvar lesion; the patient was diagnosed with Crohn's disease of the large bowel just over a year ago.