ABSTRACT
There are some controversial opinions on the prognostic value of metastasis-associated tumor markers in breast cancer. Out of them, the overexpression of c-erbB-2 proto-oncogene or CD44 gene has been debated on their activities in promoting metastatic potential. To determine the relationship between expression of both genes, and, clinicopathological parameters and disease outcomes including relapse and survival, 48 archival paraffin-embedded breast-cancer tissues were stained using monoclonal antibody against each gene product by immunohistochemical staining method, and the result was analyzed. The positive expression rates of c-erbB-2 and CD44 genes were 45.8% and 18.8%, respectively. The co-expression rates of both positives and both negatives were 14.6% and 50.0%, respectively. Except the statistically significant positive correlation between CD44 and tumor size (P=0.003), the expression rates of c-erbB-2 and CD44 had no significant relationship with tumor size, stge, lymph node status, and disease recurrence (p>0.05). In the positive expression cases for CD44, disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) in months were shorter than the negative ones (53+/-8 vs. 64+/-5 and 67+/-8 vs. 77+/-5 S.E.) And, the c-erbB-2 positive cases had longer OS than the negative ones (78+/-6 vs. 71+/-6). The OS of positive co-expression cases with the c-erbB-2 and CD44 was shorter than that of one-gene expression ones (66+/-6 vs. 75+/-7). So the OS result observed in the expression of c-erbB-2 alone was reversed in the co-expression study. Though these results had no statistically significant level (p>0.05), we suggest a question that if there is any interaction or dependency between c-erbB-2 and CD44 expression in a view of disease process including OS. Finally, further randomized controlled studies are advisable for the reproducible and significant results.