PURPOSE: There are some controversial opinions on the prognostic value of metastasis- associated tumor markers in breast cancer. Out of them, the overexpression of c-erbB-2 proto-oncogene or CD44 gene has been debated on their activities in promoting metastatic potential. MATERIALS AND METHODS: To detennine the relationship between expression of these genes, and, clinicopathological parameters and disease outcomes including relapse and survival, 48 archival paraffin-embeded breast-cancer tissues were stained using monoclonal antibody against each gene product by immunohistochemical staining method, and the result was analyzed. RESULTS: The positive expression rates of c-erbB-2 and CD44 genes were 45.8% and 18.8%, respectively. The expression rates of both genes were 14.6% and 50% of cases showed no expression of either gene. Except the statistically significant positive correlation between CD44 and tumor size (P=0.003), the expression of c-erbB-2 or CD44 expression had no significant relationship with tumor size, stage, lymph node status, and disease recurrence (P>0.05). In the positive expression cases for CD44, disesase-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) in months were shorter than the negative ones (53+/- 8 vs. 64+/-5 and 67+/-8 vs. 77+/-5 S.E.). And, the c-erbB-2 positive cases had longer OS than the negative ones (78+/- 6 vs. 71+/- 6). The OS of positive co-expression cases with the c-erbB-2 and CD44 was shorter than that of one-gene expression ones (66+/- 6 vs. 75+/-7). Thus the OS result observed in the expression of c-erbB-2 alone was reversed in the co-expression study. Though these results had no statistically significant level (P> 0.05). CONCLUSION: We suggest a question if there is any interaction or dependency between c-erbB-2 and CD44 expression in view of disease process including OS. Finally, further randomised controlled studies are advisable for the reproducible and significant results.
Breast Neoplasms* ; Breast* ; Genes, erbB-2 ; Lymph Nodes ; Recurrence ; Biomarkers, Tumor