Clinical significance of adipose tissue invasion in ER-positive breast cancer

Qi Liu¹, Zheng Sun¹, Long-long Li¹, Zheng-peng Fu², Chun-hong Xu¹

¹Department of Breast and Thyroid Surgery, Weifang Traditional Chinese Hospital, Weifang, Shandong, People's Republic of China - ²Department of Pathology, Weifang Traditional Chinese Hospital, Weifang, Shandong, People's Republic of China

Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate the prognostic significance of adipose tissue invasion in breast cancer patients and its potential value for breast cancer therapy.

Methods: A total of 162 patients with early breast cancer were selected from June 2014 to June 2015 in Department of Breast and Thyroid Surgery of Weifang Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine. The clinical data of the patients were collected, and the relationship between adipose tissue invasion and clinicopathological factors was analyzed.

Results: Among the 162 patients, there were 56 cases of breast cancer patients with adipose tissue invasion and 106 cases without adipose tissue invasion. Univariate analysis showed that tumor histological grade (P=0.041), tumor size (P=0.029), lymph node metastasis (P=0.032), positive ER (P=0.001) and molecular subtype (P=0.01) were related to adipose tissue invasion. In addition, Luminal B was positively correlated with the adipose tissue invasion, while TNBC was negatively correlated with the adipose tissue invasion. Logistic regression analysis showed that tumor histological grade (P=0.014), lymph node metastasis (P=0.003), and positive ER (P=0.044) were significantly correlated with adipose tissue invasion. Patients with adipose tissue invasion (24/56, 42.85%) had a worse prognosis than those without adipose tissue invasion (26/106, 24.58%) at 5-year follow-up (P=0.004).

Conclusion: In this study, histological grade, lymph node metastasis and positive ER were found to be associated with adipose tissue invasion of breast cancer, suggesting that adipose tissue invasion is associated with low prognosis of breast cancer and may affect the treatment of ER-positive breast cancer patients.