Chen, Zonglin, Gerhold-Ay, Aslihan, Gebhard, Susanne, Boehm, Daniel, Solbach, Christine, Lebrecht, Antje, Battista, Marco, Sicking, Isabel, Cotarelo, Christina, Cadenas, Cristina, Marchan, Rosemarie, Stewart, Joanna D, Gehrmann, Mathias, Koelbl, Heinz, Hengstler, Jan G and Schmidt, Marcus (2012) Immunoglobulin Kappa C Predicts Overall Survival in Node-Negative Breast Cancer. PLoS ONE, 7 (9), e44741. (doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0044741). (PMID:23028600)
Abstract
Background: Biomarkers of the immune system are currently not used as prognostic factors in breast cancer. We analyzed
the association of the B cell/plasma cell marker immunoglobulin kappa C (IGKC) and survival of untreated node-negative breast cancer patients.
Material and Methods: IGKC expression was evaluated by immunostaining in a cohort of 335 node-negative breast cancer patients with a median follow-up of 152 months. The prognostic significance of IGKC for disease-free survival (DFS) and breast cancer-specific overall survival (OS) was evaluated with Kaplan-Meier survival analysis as well as univariate and multivariate Cox analysis adjusted for age at diagnosis, pT stage, histological grade, estrogen receptor (ER) status, progesterone receptor (PR) status, Ki-67 and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2) status.
Results: 160 patients (47.7%) showed strong expression of IGKC. Univariate analysis showed that IGKC was significantly
associated with DFS (P = 0.017, hazard ratio [HR] = 0.570, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.360–0.903) and OS (P = 0.011, HR = 0.438, 95% CI = 0.233–0.822) in the entire cohort. The significance of IGKC was especially strong in ER negative and in luminal B carcinomas. In multivariate analysis IGKC retained its significance independent of established clinical factors for DFS (P = 0.004, HR = 0.504, 95% CI = 0.315–0.804) as well as for OS (P = 0.002, HR = 0.371, 95% CI = 0.196–0.705).
Conclusion: Expression of IGKC has an independent protective impact on DFS and OS in node-negative breast cancer.
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