title: Patients 35 years old or younger with operable breast cancer are more at risk for relapse and survival: a retrospective matched case-control study.
abstract: It has long been suggested that younger women with breast cancer have less favorable prognostic factors and poorer outcomes. Our main objectives were to determine whether poor prognosis among young women was independent of other common clinicopathologic parameters. We retrospectively analyzed 551 young patients (≤ 35 years, Group I) and 551 older patients (36-50 years, Group II), matched for year of diagnosis, family history of breast cancer, pathologic stage, hormone receptor expression and application of adjuvant therapy. Patients in Group I had significantly shorter disease-free survival (DFS) than Group II (median 23.2 months vs. 28.4 months, P = 0.024). Five-year DFS rate(63.7% vs. 74.7%, P < 0.001) and overall survival (OS) rate (79.5% vs. 85.6%, P = 0.024) in Group I was inferior to those in Group II. Multivariate analysis showed that young age was a significantly negative predictor for DFS and OS. Our study thus shows that age (≤ 35 y/o) is an independent risk factor for prognosis in operable breast cancer.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Roujun
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.forename: Shusen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Yanxia
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Donggen
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Xiaoyu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Teng
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Qin
authors.forename: Yixin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.forename: Zhongyu
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yuan
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002681:China; D018572:Disease-Free Survival; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009364:Neoplasm Recurrence, Local / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery*; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012307:Risk Factors; D055815:Young Adult