Zeitschrift für klinische und experimentelle Pathologie

Abstrakt

Race and Triple Negative Breast Cancer

K P Siziopikou and M. Cobleigh

Breast cancer is understood to represent not a single disease but a heterogeneous group of tumors with different biologic behavior, prognosis and response to treatment. Luminal A, luminal B, HER2 overexpressing, triple negative and basal subtypes of breast carcinomas are now considered distinct entities with unique biologic characteristics and clinical outcomes. Classic epidemiologic studies have also shown that race plays a role in the incidence and ultimate prognosis of breast cancer; specifically while the incidence of breast carcinomas is higher in Caucasian women, African-American patients have worse overall prognosis with higher breast cancer mortality rates. While the impact of socioeconomic and health care access factors is not to be dismissed, unique biologic characteristics in this patient population may play an important role in the difference in patient outcome. In this report we evaluated possible racial differences in the incidence of the basal subtype of triple negative breast carcinomas in a large cohort of consecutive breast cancer patients.