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Old 12-07-2006, 11:50 AM   #15
Lani
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 4,778
the best article I have found so far on this...

Am J Clin Pathol. 2003 Dec;120(6):917-27. Links
Her-2/neu gene amplification in familial vs sporadic breast cancer. Impact on the behavior of the disease.

Espinosa AB, et al
Cancer Research Center, Department of Medicine, General Cytometry Service, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain.
We compared the incidence of Her-2/neu amplification in patients with and without a family history of breast cancer and correlated gene status with clinicobiologic and prognostic features in sporadic and familial cases. Of 108 patients, 28.7% had gene amplification. Among 96 cases with family history information available, 28 had an affected first-degree relative. The gene was amplified more frequently in familial than in sporadic cases (13/28 [46%] vs 14/68 [21%]; P = .01). Among familial cases, amplification was associated with adverse clinicobiologic features (poorly differentiated tumors [P = .05], larger tumors [P = .05], more lymph nodes involved [P = .04], and DNA aneuploid [P = .02] and highly proliferative tumors [P = .005]), and the relapse (P = .02) and disease-related death (P = .05) rates were higher than in cases without amplification. Among sporadic cases, amplification was not associated with significantly different disease features, except for a higher incidence of DNA aneuploid tumors (P = .01), percentage of S-phase tumor cells (P = .006), and lower proportion of estrogen (P = .001) and progesterone (P = .002) receptors. Her-2/neu amplification was observed more frequently among patients with a family history of breast cancer, in whom it was associated with adverse clinicobiologic features and a worse clinical outcome.
^^^^^^^^^
They discussed that those with sporadic (non-familial) breast cancer had a much better prognosis than those with familial (defined just as having a relative with breast cancer, since going back and testing those specimens seems to be impossible)
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