title: Prospective study of fatty acid synthetase (FAS) expression in breast cancer and progression of disease.
abstract: Fatty acid synthetase (FAS) mRNA was determined in breast carcinomas of 91 patients. The patients were followed for an average of 47 months. Disease-free survival and overall survival were compared with the expression of FAS-mRNA in the tumour. Sixty-five patients remained disease-free during the follow-up period; twenty-six had recurrent disease, and of those 18 died of the disease. Seventy-five percent of the tumours had low FAS-mRNA levels and there were fewer deaths in this group of patients (15%) than in that with high FAS-mRNA levels (35%). The proportion of recurrences was also smaller in the group with low FAS-mRNA. The probability of survival for five years was over 80% for the low FAS-mRNA group, and about 50% for the high FAS-mRNA group.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hahnel