Prognostic significance of clusterin immunoreactivity in breast cancer

Clusterin (CLU) is involved in a variety of biological processes and has been found to be expressed even in many human malignancies, including breast cancer. Currently, there are only few data on the prognostic value of CLU in breast cancer. We therefore evaluated the relationship between CLU expression and clinicopathological parameters as well as relapse-free survival (RFS) and metastasis-free survival (MFS) of 141 breast cancer patients using the monoclonal antibody 7D1. CLU expression was found in 26% of cases and correlated significantly with high histological tumor grade and high Ki-67 labeling index (p=0.026 and p=0.010, respectively). Univariate Cox regression analysis revealed that CLU expression was tendentiously associated with RFS (p=0.068; relative risk [RR]: 1.77) and MFS (p=0.122; RR: 1.57). In a multivariate analysis, tumor grade, stage, estrogen receptor status and patients age (concerning RFS) as well as grade and lymph node status (concerning MFS) were identified as significant independent prognosticators. CLU expression showed an independent prognostic relevance concerning prediction of RFS by trend (p=0.110; RR: 1.81). We conclude from our data that estimation of CLU immunoreactivity may be helpful as a supplementary criterion to better assess the tumors propensity to relapse in selected cases of breast carcinoma.