Introduction: There are several discrepancies in the literature concerning breast cancer behavior in elderly women. For this reason, we decided to study the possible clinical-biological differences between infiltrating ductal breast carcinomas in women older than 60 and those between 41 and 60 years old.
Patients and methods: The study group included 161 women with infiltrating ductal carcinomas of the breast, 90 of whom were women over 60 years and 71 whose ages ranged from 41 to 60 years old. Estrogen receptors (ER), progesterone receptors (PR), pS2, cathepsin D, tissue-type plasminogen activator (t-PA) and hyaluronic acid (HA) cytosolic concentrations were analyzed in addition to those of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), HA and erbB2/neuoncoprotein in cell surfaces. Size, axillary lymph node involvement, distant metastases, histological grade, ploidy and cellular S-phase fraction were also considered as study variables.
Results: Infiltrating ductal carcinomas of the breast in women over 60 had lower pS2 concentrations (p: 0.0367), cell surface (p: 0.021) and cytosolic hyaluronic acid (p: 0.0019) levels than those of women whose ages ranged from 41 to 60 years old. Furthermore, the former had higher S-phase values (p: 0.0345) and percentage of cases with S-phase >7% (p: 0.0483).
Conclusions: The results obtained (higher cellular proliferation and lower pS2, cell surface and cytosolic hyaluronic acid concentrations) suggest that the infiltrating ductal carcinomas of the breast in women older than 60 could have a worse behavior, as has been suggested by other authors, even though further studies with more patients would be needed in order to observe if these biological differences still persist.