BACKGROUND: Although mutations in BRCA are rare in non familiar breast carcinomas, it is common the lost of expression of the protein codified by this gene. The prognostic importance of this finding is not well established. OBJECTIVES: to analyze the immunohistochemistry expression of BRCA1 in sporadic breast carcinomas and to compare the results with clinical and histopathologic data of prognostic significance. MATERIAL AND METHOD: 102 NOS ductal carcinomas were submitted to the immunohistochemistry method with the antibodies BRCA1, ER, PR, p53, c-erbB-2 and Ki67. The clinical data were retrieved from medical files. RESULTS: In normal epithelium, BRCA1 showed only nuclear staining, while the carcinomas showed either nuclear or cytoplasmatic staining. Carcinomas with reduced expression of BRCA1 were poorly differentiated, with high proliferative rate, negative for hormonal receptors, and positive for c-erbB-2. There was not correlation between BRCA1 expression with age, menstrual status, tumoral size, lymph nodes status, pathologic stage, and p53 expression. The mean survival and disease-free survival of patients which tumors expressed less and more of 25% of neoplastic cells stained for BRCA1 were 4.2 and 3.9; and 7.8 and 6.3 years respectively. CONCLUSIONS: BRCA1 may be considered a useful marker in identification of sporadic carcinomas of poor prognosis that is in high risk for precocious recurrence.
BRCA1; Immunohistochemistry; Prognostic factors; Breast; Cancer
