Core Needle Biopsy Accuracy for Androgen Receptor Expression in Invasive Breast Cancer

Objective Breast cancer (BC) biomarkers, such as hormone receptors expression, are crucial to guide therapy in BC patients. Antiandrogens have been studied in BC; however, limited data are available on androgen receptor (AR) expression test methodology. We aim to report the core needle biopsy (CNB) accuracy for AR expression in BC. Methods Patients diagnosed with stage I-III invasive BC from a single institution were included. Androgen receptor expression was evaluated by immunohistochemistry (IHC) using 1 and 10% cutoff and the AR expression in surgical specimens (SS) was the gold standard. Kappa coefficients were used to evaluate the intraprocedural agreement. Results A total of 72 patients were included, with a mean age of 61 years old and 84% were Luminal A or B tumors. The prevalence of AR expression in all BC samples was 87.5% using a cutoff ≥ 10% in SS. With a cutoff value ≥ 1%, CNB had an accuracy of 95.8% (Kappa value = 0.645; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.272–1.000; p < 0.001) and 86.1% (Kappa value = 0.365; 95% CI: 0.052–0.679; p < 0.001) when ≥ 10% cutoff was used for AR positivity. Androgen receptor expression in CNB (cutoff ≥ 1%) had a sensitivity of 98.5%, specificity of 60%, positive predictive value of 97.0%, and a negative predictive value of 76.9% in the detection of AR expression in SS. Conclusion Core needle biopsy has good accuracy in evaluating AR expression in BC. The accuracy of CNB decreases with higher cutoff values for AR positivity.