Expression of human mammaglobin in breast carcinoma

Objective To investigate the expression and role of human mammaglobin A(MGA) in breast carcinoma.Methods 87 cases of primary breast carcinoma and their matched adjacent non-neoplastic tissues and 20 cases of metastatic breast carcinoma were enrolled into the study.Immunohistochemistry for MGA was performed in all cases using EnVision method.Results The positive rates for MGA in breast carcinoma and adjacent non-neoplastic tissue were 70.1% and 74.4%,respectively,which had no statistical significance.However the strongly positive rate of MGA in breast carcinoma was significantly higher than that in adjacent non-neoplastic tissue(P0.01).The expression of MGA was associated with the status of axillary lymph nodes,ER and PR(P0.05),while the MGA expression level was independent of tumor origin,age,histologic type,histologic grade,TNM staging and c-erbB-2 status.Conclusion MGA is expressed in primary and metastatic breast carcinoma,which may be helpful for clinicopathologic diagnosis.The correlation of MGA expression with the status of axillary lymph nodes,ER and PR may have a potential value for assessing the patient's prognosis.