BRCA1 expression in invasive breast carcinomas and clinicopathological correlations

BRCA1-positive tumors characterize a heterogeneous group of breast cancers with a specific range of histopathological and immuno-histochemical features. We evaluated the relationship between morphological characteristics and immunohistochemical profile of 14 BRCA1-positive breast tumors from an initial study group of 40 breast tumors. Morphological parameters of all cases were studied on Hematoxylin-Eosin-stained sections and their immunophenotypic profile was assessed using antibodies against estrogen receptors (ER), progesteron receptors (PR), c-erbB2 oncoprotein (Her2/neu), BRCA1-protein, and the proliferative rate of the tumoral cells was assessed by Ki-67-proliferative index. All patients were females with an average age of 43.71-year-old. Fourteen out of the 40 tumors were BRCA1-positive. All breast carcinomas in this study were invasive. The most common histological type in our study was invasive ductal carcinoma. The majority of the tumors were high-grade G3. The examination of the lymph node found metastasis in eight cases. We found 11 cases of triple negative (ER, PR and Her2/neu), while the rest showed positivity for all these three markers. We observed a high-celullar proliferation index in all cases. The immunohistochemical study of BRCA1-protein is important to the study of the development and progression of the disease.