title: Her-2/neu gene amplification in familial vs sporadic breast cancer. Impact on the behavior of the disease.
abstract: We compared the incidence of Her-2/neu amplification in patients with and without a family history of breast cancer and correlated gene status with clinicobiologic and prognostic features in sporadic and familial cases. Of 108 patients, 28.7% had gene amplification. Among 96 cases with family history information available, 28 had an affected first-degree relative. The gene was amplified more frequently in familial than in sporadic cases (13/28 [46%] vs 14/68 [21%]; P = .01). Among familial cases, amplification was associated with adverse clinicobiologic features (poorly differentiated tumors [P = .05], larger tumors [P = .05], more lymph nodes involved [P = .04], and DNA aneuploid [P = .02] and highly proliferative tumors [P = .005]), and the relapse (P = .02) and disease-related death (P = .05) rates were higher than in cases without amplification. Among sporadic cases, amplification was not associated with significantly different disease features, except for a higher incidence of DNA aneuploid tumors (P = .01), percentage of S-phase tumor cells (P = .006), and lower proportion of estrogen (P = .001) and progesterone (P = .002) receptors. Her-2/neu amplification was observed more frequently among patients with a family history of breast cancer, in whom it was associated with adverse clinicobiologic features and a worse clinical outcome.
authors.affiliation: Cancer Research Center, Department of Medicine, General Cytometry Service, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain.
authors.forename: Ana B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Espinosa
authors.forename: Maria D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Tabernero
authors.forename: Maria C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: García-Macías
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Primo
authors.forename: Amalia Gómez
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Bernal
authors.forename: Juan J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Cruz
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ramos
authors.forename: Jaime
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Font de Mora
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gómez Alonso
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Orfao
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000782:Aneuploidy; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics*; D005260:Female; D005784:Gene Amplification; D019398:Genes, BRCA1; D018734:Genes, erbB-2; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009154:Mutation