The clinical significance of CD44+/CD24-/low in breast cancer

Objective To detect the expression of CD44+/CD24-/low in breast cancer cells, and investigate its relation with clinicopathologic features and prognosis. Methods Double-staining immuno-histochemistry was used to detect the expression of CD44+/CD24-/low on paraffin-embedded tissues of 144 patients and 30 normal or benign breast tissues. Moreover, the clinicopathologic features of patients with breast cancer and follow-up data were analyzed. Results The expression rate of CD44+/CD24-/low ranged from 0% to 8% in normal or benign breast tissues,and from 0% to 75% in breast cancer tissues,respec-tively. The prevalence of CD44+/CD24-/low cells in 67 tumors was > 10%, and ≤10% in the remaining 77 tumors. The expression levels of CD44+/CD24-/low were significantly related with lymph node metasta-sis (P<0.01), pathological stage (P<0.01), HER-2 expression (P<0.01) and recurrence (P< 0.01). Recurrences of tumors with high percentages of CD44+/CD24-/low cells were mainly distant, par-ticularly osseous metastasis. The 5-year disease-free survival rate in high and low expression of CD44+/CD24-/low was 65% and 82% respectively (P<0.01), and 5-year overall survival rats was 68% and 86% respectively (P<0.05). Conclusion The expression of CD44+/CD24-/low was possibly associated with breast cancer metastasis and survival, and can be used a reference indicator to evehate the prognosis of the patients with breast cancer. Key words: Breast carcinoma;  CD44;  Immunohistochemistry