Association between low estrogen receptor positive breast cancer and staining performance.

ABSTRACT: Estrogen receptor (ER) expression in breast carcinomas, determined by immunohistochemistry, indicates statistically significant benefit to endocrine therapy in patients with tumors expressing ER in ≥1% of tumor cells. Rare cases with low ER expression (1-10%) lead to the dilemma of treating these tumors as ER positive or negative. We hypothesize that low ER positive result from poor staining performance and that we may detect this artefact by assessing the average dynamic range of normal ducts adjacent to low ER positive tumors. Using quantitative tools, we compare the dynamic range of normal background ER expression in patients with low (1-10%) ER tumors to dynamic range of ER expression in normal epithelium from control patient populations, to determine if low ER cases are accompanied by

SUBMITTER: Caruana D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7002746 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature