ABSTRACT

The finding of significantly higher expressions of CD, TK1, and CycD1 in the tumour component compared to the non-tumoural areas raised the possibility of the use of all three antibodies in determining the malign character of breast lesions. CD expression in the intraductal component or in the reactive stromal cells may be used as an indicator of the invasive potential of the tumo-ural lesion. CycD1 expression may be related to a better prognosis.

The intraductal component showed a higher degree of staining for CD than the invasive tu-mour component. A correlation was found between the CD expression and the reactive stromal cells and also the increasing degrees of invasive tumour. The negativity or weak expression for CD, TK1, and CycD1 in non-tumoural areas was found to be significant. CycD1 expression is found to be lower in advanced and/or high grade carcinomas and is found to be related to better survival rates in patients with invasive ductal carcinoma.

The examination of slides stained with Haematoxylin-Eosin of 70 patients was performed retrospectively, and clinical and prognostic data were obtained. The histopathological grading of the invasive tumour com-ponent was done using the Nottingham modification of the Bloom-Richardson grading system, and staging by using the system proposed by the American Jo-int Committee on Cancer. Pearson’s chi-square, Likelihood ratio, Fisher’s exact tests, and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis were used as statistical tests and the significance of observed differences was set at p<0.05.

To evaluate the expression of cathepsin D (CD), thymidine kinase 1 (TK1), and cyclin D1 (CycD1) in invasive ductal breast carcinomas with a predominant intraductal component and to determine their prognostic value.