anwer, N., Abdel-Rahman, A., Salem, A., Essa, A. (2003). Immunohistochemical Expression of Estrogen And Progesterone Receptors in Neuroendocrine Breast Carcinomas. The Egyptian Journal of Hospital Medicine, 11(1), 101-111. doi: 10.21608/ejhm.2003.18722
Naser M. anwer; Ahmed H. Abdel-Rahman; Ahmed S. Salem; Abdel- Ghany Awad Essa. "Immunohistochemical Expression of Estrogen And Progesterone Receptors in Neuroendocrine Breast Carcinomas". The Egyptian Journal of Hospital Medicine, 11, 1, 2003, 101-111. doi: 10.21608/ejhm.2003.18722
anwer, N., Abdel-Rahman, A., Salem, A., Essa, A. (2003). 'Immunohistochemical Expression of Estrogen And Progesterone Receptors in Neuroendocrine Breast Carcinomas', The Egyptian Journal of Hospital Medicine, 11(1), pp. 101-111. doi: 10.21608/ejhm.2003.18722
anwer, N., Abdel-Rahman, A., Salem, A., Essa, A. Immunohistochemical Expression of Estrogen And Progesterone Receptors in Neuroendocrine Breast Carcinomas. The Egyptian Journal of Hospital Medicine, 2003; 11(1): 101-111. doi: 10.21608/ejhm.2003.18722
Immunohistochemical Expression of Estrogen And Progesterone Receptors in Neuroendocrine Breast Carcinomas
3Departments of General Surgery, Al-Azhar University
Abstract
Neuroendocrine (NE) breast carcinomas are defined by the diffuse expression of NEmarkers. They may coexpress NE and non-NE substances such as glycoproteins and apocrine protein “divergent differentiation”. In the present study, twenty NE-breast carcinomas, expressing chromogranin A (CgA) and neurone specific enolase (NSE) were selected from a series of two hundreds retrospective breast carcinomas, in addition to ten normal breast tissue biopsies taken as control. The NE-tumors were graded into G1, G2 & G3 and were divided according to the mucin expression into group 1 (Mucinous NE-tumors) and group 2 (other variants that did not express mucin). Each group included 10 cases. Immunohistochemistry was applied to paraffin sections for investigating CgA & NSE expression as well as estrogen and progesterone receptors (ER & PR) status. Group 1 tumors fell within lower grades than those of group 2. Moreover, ER & PR positivity rates were 75% & 65% respectively. Also, ER expression was not significantly correlated with NE phenotype (P = 0.14) or with grade (P = 0.24) while PR expression was significantly higher in group 1 than in group 2 (P = 0.02) and in G1, G2 than G3 (P = 0.04) Both steroid receptors coexpression was significantly higher in group 1 than in group 2 tumors (P = 0.05) and found in G1 and G2 but not in G3 tumors. Finally, ER and PR were coexpressed, although fewer & sporadic, in all control biopsies (100%) compared to its presence only in 45% of the studied NE tumors. The study concluded that NE-breast tumors, producing high level of NE markers were specific entity and those coexpressing ER & PR might possess a multidirectional differentiation. Moreover, it may appear quite necessary to define estrogen & progesterone receptors status in NE breast carcinomas so as to decide, whether or not to try hormone therapy as adjuvant treatment modality in these tumors.