title: Nerve fibers in breast cancer tissues indicate aggressive tumor progression.
abstract: Emerging evidence has indicated nerve fibers as a marker in the progression of various types of cancers, such as pancreatic cancer and prostate cancer. However, whether nerve fibers are associated with breast cancer progression remains unclear. In this study, we evaluated the presence of nerve fibers in 352 breast cancer specimens and 83 benign breast tissue specimens including 43 cases of cystic fibrosis and 40 cases of fibroadenoma from 2 independent breast tumor center using immunohistochemical staining for specific peripheral nerve fiber markers.In all, nerve fibers were present in 130 out of 352 breast cancer tissue specimens, while none were detected in normal breast tissue specimens. Among 352 cases, we defined 239 cases from Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hospital, Guangzhou, China, as the training set, and 113 cases from the First Affiliated Hospital of Shantou University, Guangdong, China, as the validation set. The thickness of tumor-involving nerve fibers is significantly correlated with poor differentiation, lymph node metastasis, high clinical staging, and triple negative subtype in breast cancer. More importantly, Cox multifactor analysis indicates that the thickness of tumor-involving nerve fibers is a previously unappreciated independent prognostic factors associated with shorter disease-free survival of breast cancer patients. Our findings are further validated by online Oncomine database. In conclusion, our results show that nerve fiber involvement in breast cancer is associated with progression of the malignancy and warrant further studies in the future.
authors.affiliation: From the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Malignant Tumor Epigenetics and Gene Regulation (DH, SS, XC, YZ, WW, JC, FC, CH, JL, WH, QL, FS, ES, NO), Medical Research Center, Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University; Breast Tumor Center (DH, SS, WW, JC, FC, CH, JL, WH, QL, FS, ES); and Department of Pathology (XS, YZ, NO), Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Di
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Shicheng
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Su
authors.forename: Xiuying
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Cui
authors.forename: Ximing
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.forename: Yunjie
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Jianing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Fei
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Chonghua
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: He
authors.forename: Jiang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Qiang
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Fengxi
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Su
authors.forename: Erwei
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: Nengtai
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ouyang
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*; D018270:Carcinoma, Ductal, Breast / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009412:Nerve Fibers / Q000473:pathology*; D011379:Prognosis