Cargando…

Stromal, rather than epithelial cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) expression is associated with overall survival of breast cancer patients

BACKGROUND: Prognostic value of enhanced COX-2 expression in breast cancer has been controversial for a long time. The opinions vary widely between studies. Moreover, significant majority of studies considered only COX-2 expression in cancer epithelial cells. METHODS: We examined the prognostic valu...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Urban, Justyna, Kuźbicki, Łukasz, Szatkowski, Grzegorz, Stanek-Widera, Agata, Lange, Dariusz, Chwirot, Barbara W
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4192334/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25269624
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2407-14-732
Descripción
Sumario:BACKGROUND: Prognostic value of enhanced COX-2 expression in breast cancer has been controversial for a long time. The opinions vary widely between studies. Moreover, significant majority of studies considered only COX-2 expression in cancer epithelial cells. METHODS: We examined the prognostic value of COX-2 expression in both epithelial and stromal cells using three different antibodies and three algorithms of immunohistochemical scoring and categorizing the tumours into COX-2 overexpressing groups. RESULTS: Our results demonstrate that COX-2 expression in stromal cells is independent prognostic factor indicating worse overall survival of patients. Such a result was obtained using each of the three antibodies and two of the algorithms used for evaluations of COX-2 expression levels. We also show that immunohistochemical assessment of the prognostic value of COX-2 expression in cancer epithelial cells depends to a large extent on a combination of primary antibodies and algorithms used for determination of the COX-2 over-expressing tumours. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that stromal expression of COX-2 is independent prognostic parameter relatively insensitive to variations in sensitivity of antibodies used for its determination. Wide scatter of the published results concerning prognostic value of COX-2 expression in breast cancer tissues seems to be due to a large extent to multitude of antibodies and scoring algorithms used by different groups.