90K (Mac-2 BP) expression was evaluated by immunohistochemistry in paraffin-embedded tissue from a consecutive series of lymph-node negative breast cancer patients who did not receive adjuvant systemic treatment. An independent series of patients served as validation set. The association of 90K expression with risk of recurrence and death was examined in survival analyses together with known prognostic factors. High levels of 90K expression (IHC score>8) were observed in 43 (25.3%) of 170 tumors examined. We found elevated risks of distant recurrence and overall mortality in patients with high 90K expression compared with patients with low 90K expression in their tumors. This increase persisted after adjusting for other prognostic factors in multivariate analysis (hazard ratio=4.084; p<0.001 for recurrence; hazard ratio=4.298; p<0.001 for death). These findings were confirmed in the validation set. Therefore, evaluation of 90K expression may be beneficial to identify lymph-node negative breast cancer patients at lower risk of disease recurrence and death.
Copyright (c) 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.