Hormone receptors over the last 8 years in a cancer referral center in India: what was and what is?

ABSTRACT

This study was carried out to observe the trend in hormone receptors over the last 8 years in a tertiary cancer center in India. A total of 11,780 tumors analyzed for hormone receptors over the last 7 years were compared with the results of hormone receptor expression in a prior published study on 798 cases of breast cancer from the same institute. The patient's ages ranged from 18 to 102 years, Sixty percent of the patients were in the age group of 31-50 years. Seventy percent of the tumors were grade III tumors. The percentage of hormone receptor expression in breast cancer in the last 8 years varied from 52 to 57%. The overall receptor expression in the last 8 years shifted within a 5% range, confirming that the hormone receptor expression in Indian patients with breast cancer is low. However, there was redistribution within the pattern of estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR) expression among tumors showing hormone receptor expression. Breast cancers showing only PR expression reduced dramatically from 21% in the year 1999 to in the year 2006, with a parallel increase in breast cancers showing combined ER and PR positivity (from 25 to 41.8%) and only ER expression (from 7.4 to 10.6%). The hormone receptor expression in breast cancers in India is and continues to be low but the high incidence of only PR-positive tumors in our population reported earlier was misrepresented.