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1. HER2 Status Associated With Recurrence in Node-Negative Breast Cancer: Presented at SSO
2. [Doctor's Guide]
3. WASHINGTON, DC — March 19, 2007 — Absence of cancerous cells in sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) is generally taken as predicting good prognosis in breast cancer. But, according to research presented here at the 60th annual meeting of the Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO), node-negative patients whose tumours express the HER2 protein may be at higher-than-expected risk for cancer recurrence.
4. Julie E. Lang, MD, surgical oncology fellow, University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States, reported on a retrospective analysis of women who underwent primary breast tumour resection and SLN dissection.
5. The research was performed at her former institution, the University of California-San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States.
6. Dr. Lang's analysis included 307 patients who were found to be SLN-negative. Of these, 53 had primary tumours that were positive for HER2 by immunohistochemistry and/or fluorescent hybridization in situ methods, while 198 were HER2-negative and the remaining 56 had inconclusive or missing data on HER2 status. Patients were followed for a mean of 4.1 years.
7. In a poster presentation March 16th Dr. Lang said that this is one of the larger studies to look at HER2 status as a prognostic factor in node-negative breast cancer.
8. Results of the analysis showed that HER2-positive patients in the series were significantly more likely to have cancer recurrence — both systemic (P < .01) and locoregional (P = .038) — and had a higher mortality rate (P < .01).
9. Recurrence-free survival was markedly worse in HER2-positive women. Five years after resection, nearly 95% of HER2-negative patients had survived disease-free versus 70% of HER2-positive patients (P = .0006).
10. The analysis found no significant association between HER2 and SLN status.
11. In short, the study suggested that negative SLN findings do not necessarily predict good prognosis in HER2-positive patients.