Expression of CK5/6 and Ki-67 in apocrine triple negative breast cancer and their relationship with clinicopathological features
Objective To study the the expression of cytokeratin 5/6(CK5/6)and cell proliferation an-tigen(Ki-67)in apocrine triple-negative breast carcinoma(ATNBC)and their relationship with clinicopatho-logical features and prognosis.Methods Twenty-one patients with pathologically diagnosed invasive apocrine breast cancer and negative estrogen receptor(ER),progesterone receptor(PR)and human epidermal growth factor-2(Her-2)in this hospital were selected as the ATNBC group,Twenty-two cases in non-ATNBC(NATNBC)were randomly selected as negative control(NATNBC group).The clinical pathological data and follow-up data of all patients were collected,and the expressions of CK5/6 and Ki-67,as well as their relation-ship with clinicopathological characteristics was analyzed.The prognosis in the patients with ATNBC was ana-lyzed.Results There were statistically significant differences in age(P<0.001),age distribution(P=0.001),histological grading(P<0.001),and distant metastasis(P=0.020)between the ATNBC group and the NATNBC group(P=0.020).There were 7 cases(33.33%)of CK5/6 positive expression in the ATNBC group and 17 cases(80.95%)in NATNBC group.There was statistically significant difference in the positive expression rate of CK5/6 between the ATNBC group and NATNBC group(P<0.05).There were 3 cases(14.29%)of Ki-67 high proliferation in the ATNBC group and 17 cases(77.27%)in the NATNBC group.The high proliferation rates of Ki-67 had statistically significant difference between the ATNBC group and NATNBC group(P<0.05).The positive expression rate of CK5/6 was correlated with the tumor sites and lymph node metastasis in ATNBC patients(P<0.05).The high proliferation rate of Ki-67 was correlated with nerve invasion in ATNBC patients(P<0.05).The survival analysis showed that there was statistically significant difference in the 5 years disease-free survival(DFS)rate between the ATNBC group and NATNBC group(P<0.05).Conclusion ATNBC has its unique clinicopathological features,CK5/6 is less expressed in ATN-BC,the high proliferation of Ki-67 is also less,and the prognosis of ATNBC is better than that of NATNBC.