[The importance of hormone receptor determination in breast malignancies]

Estrogen and progesterone receptor phenotypes expressed as "positive" or "negative" are widely used for the determination of estrogen dependence of primary breast tumor. In our opinion the receptor phenotype, so important for biological and clinical behavior of tumor, should consider the quantitative values of receptor content. For this purpose, the correlation between quantitative estrogen versus progesterone receptor content and the distribution of the quantitative estrogen and progesterone receptor content within some parameters of tumor and tumor-host was analyzed. Our results show: There is the same range of correlation between estrogen versus progesterone receptor content in tubular tumor type, invasive ductal and lobular carcinomas, and in all three histologic grades; Histologic type influences the estrogen dependence through histologic grade. There is no difference in distribution of the quantitative estrogen and progesterone receptor content when corresponding grades of tubular tumor type, invasive ductal and lobular carcinomas are compared; In premenopause status histologic grade defines different groups with regard to the quantitative progesterone receptor content; In postmenopause status histologic grade defines different groups with regard to the quantitative estrogen and progesterone receptor content; In tumors with histologic grade I, transition of pre to postmenopause status is connected with a significant increase of the frequency of the high quantitative estrogen receptor content; In tumors with histologic grade III, transition of pre to postmenopause status is connected with a significant increase of the frequency of the low quantitative estrogen and progesterone receptor content.