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Androgen receptor expression is a predictive marker in chemotherapy-treated patients with endocrine receptor-positive primary breast cancers

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Abstract

Purpose

The androgen receptor (AR) is intensively discussed as a prognostic and/or predictive marker in breast cancer patients.

Methods

We evaluated the value of AR mRNA expression with the Affymetrix HG-U 133A array in 3 different cohorts: a cohort of breast cancer patients who received adjuvant treatment (cohort A; n = 165), a cohort of untreated breast cancer patients (cohort B; n = 200) and a cohort of chemotherapy-treated breast cancer patients with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive tumors (cohort C; n = 223).

Results

AR mRNA expression was associated with lower grading (Grades 1 and 2) as well as ER and progesterone receptor (PgR) positivity in all cohorts. In the treated cohort (cohort A), low androgen receptor expression was associated with shorter event-free survival (OR 2,34, 95 % CI 1.01–5.43, p = 0.047) which was not seen in the untreated cohort B. Subgroup analysis revealed that shorter survival of patients with low AR mRNA expression was observed mainly in the ER-positive subgroup of patients treated with adjuvant chemotherapy. In the validation cohort C we could confirm a benefit of chemotherapy for the group of tumors with high AR mRNA expression (5-year event-free survival (EFS) 74 % versus 57 %, p = 0.013). In this cohort, low AR mRNA expression was associated with shorter event-free survival also in multivariate analysis (OR 2.86, 95 % CI 1.29–6.35, p = 0.010) adjusted for HER2, ki-67, tumor size, age and tumor grade.

Conclusions

We provide evidence that AR expression is associated with chemotherapy responsiveness in ER-positive patients.

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Conflict of interest

All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Gynecology, University Medical Center, Martinistrasse 52, 20246, Hamburg, Germany

    Isabell Witzel, Monika Graeser, Dina Schütze, Alma Rausch, Fritz Jänicke, Karin Milde-Langosch & Volkmar Müller

  2. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University Hospital, Frankfurt, Germany

    Thomas Karn

  3. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University Hospital, Mainz, Germany

    Markus Schmidt

  4. Stratifyer Molecular Oncology GmbH, Cologne, Germany

    Ralph Wirtz

Authors
  1. Isabell Witzel
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  2. Monika Graeser
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  3. Thomas Karn
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  4. Markus Schmidt
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  5. Ralph Wirtz
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  6. Dina Schütze
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  7. Alma Rausch
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  8. Fritz Jänicke
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  9. Karin Milde-Langosch
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  10. Volkmar Müller
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Isabell Witzel.

Additional information

Isabell Witzel and Monika Graeser equally contributed to this work.

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Witzel, I., Graeser, M., Karn, T. et al. Androgen receptor expression is a predictive marker in chemotherapy-treated patients with endocrine receptor-positive primary breast cancers. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol 139, 809–816 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-013-1382-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-013-1382-8

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