Breast cancer prognosis is better in patients who develop subsequent metachronous thyroid cancer

Breast cancer (BC) and thyroid cancer (TC) are common malignancies among females. However, the connection between TC and BC is not well understood. To explore the relationship between these two cancers and to determine the effect of second metachronous TC on BC survival, we compared BC patients with or without second primary TC using data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. We extracted data from patients with only BC or TC and from BC patients with a second metachronous cancer from 2000-2014. Differences in the clinicopathological and treatment characteristics between BC patients with or without second metachronous TC were analyzed by chi-square tests. Multivariate analyses of BC survival were performed by using Cox regression models. Comparison of disease-specific survival (DSS) curves between these cohorts was performed with the log-rank (Mantel-Cox) test. Survival analyses were also performed using data from 1980-1994. Within this dataset, we found 1,262 BC cases in which a second metachronous TC (BC2TC) developed, accounting for 3.1% of all metachronous cancers following BC from 2000-2014. No significant differences were found in molecular markers. In addition, the mean age at BC diagnosis was younger in the BC2TC group than in the BC group (55.418 y vs 60.273 y). Half of the BC2TC patients developed TC in the first three years following BC diagnosis. Patients with BC2TC showed better DSS than those with BC alone from 2000-2014 (P<0.001). However, this superiority was not significant from 1980-1994 (P = 0.579) or for TNM stage I BC (P = 0.927) and grade I BC (P = 0.431) from 2000-2014. In conclusion, the incidence of BC2TC has increased dramatically during the past 15 years. In addition, patients with BC2TC showed better DSS than patients with BC alone, especially in cases from 2000-2014.