Prevalence of Prognostic Biomarkers in Archival Specimens and Breast Cancer Survival Among White, Black, and Asian Women

摘要

We assessed distributions of breast cancer tumor characteristics and molecular prognostic biomarkers by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic position among paraffin-embedded tumor biopsy specimens from 135 U.S. women (48 white, 44 black, 43 Asian) diagnosed with breast cancer between 1966 and 1990. No racial/ ethnic or socio-economic differences in distributions were observed for tumor stage, lymph node involvement, estrogen, progesterone, and epidermal growth factor receptors, oncogenes Her2/neu and p53, cytoplasmic proteins cathepsin-D and ps2, and two indices of cell growth, Ki67 and DNA ploidy, adjusting for age at diagnosis, menopausal status, place of birth and, for racial/ethnic comparisons, socioeconomic position. Black and Asian women, however, were 3.5 times (95% confidence interval CI = 1.2-10.1) and 3.7 times (95% CI = 1.3-10.6) more likely than white women to have a tumor size of more than 20 mm, and Asian women were 3.4 times (95% CI = 1.1-10.4) more likely than black women to be positive for androgen receptor, adjusting for these same factors. No differences in distributions by socioeconomic position were observed for these latter two tumor characteristics. These data suggest that racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in breast cancer survival are unlikely to be explained by differential distributions of molecular breast cancer prognostic biomarkers.