title: Phosphorylated-p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase expression is associated with clinical factors in invasive breast cancer.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  P38 mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) level is an important prognostic factor in breast cancer. This study was performed to detect the expressions of P-p38 MAPK expression in breast cancer and explore their correlations with clinicopathological factors.
  
  
  METHODS
  Tumor samples from 355 Chinese patients diagnosed with invasive breast cancer and adjacent non-cancerous tissue were collected between 2003 and 2010. The expression of P-p38 MAPK was analyzed using immunohistochemical staining. The correlations between P-p38 MAPK expression and clinicopathological findings including age, AJCC Stage, Histologic characters, ER, PR, and HER2 were analyzed using the parametric correlation method. P-p38 MAPK was selected as dependent variable to perform multivariate analysis respectively at last.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Overall, 161 (45 %) and 183 (52 %) of the 355 specimens showed positive P-p38 MAPK staining in the cytoplasm and nucleus respectively, which were significant higher than that in the adjacent non-cancerous tissues in both the cytoplasm and the nucleus. High P-p38 MAPK expression of cytoplasm and nucleus were both associated with positive PR status in luminal A/B type of breast cancer, and were both associated with positive HER2 status in HER2-positive type of breast cancer. The result of multivariate analysis demonstrated that HER2 and PR were both significantly association with P-p38 MAPK expression of cytoplasm and nucleus.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our study suggests that P-p38 MAPK expression were significantly associated with clinicopathological factors and PR/HER2 might association with phosphorylation of p38 MAPK in different types of breast cancer.
authors.affiliation: Department of Oncology, Changhai Hospital, Second Military Medical University, 168, Changhai Road, Shanghai, 200433 China.
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Beijing Military General Hospital, Beijing, 100700 China.
authors.forename: Huayong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Clinical Laboratory, 85th Hospital of PLA, Shanghai, 200052 China.
authors.forename: Ning
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: Department of Oncology, Changhai Hospital, Second Military Medical University, 168, Changhai Road, Shanghai, 200433 China.
authors.forename: Yajie
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
keywords: Breast cancer; Invasive; Phosphorylate; p38 MAPK