Relationships of steroid hormone receptors, age and histological characteristics in human breast cancer.

Abstract A number of 178 human primary mammary carcinomas were evaluated for estradiol receptor (ER) content, patients' age, histologic type, tumor histological grade of differentiation and content of elastosis. For a subset of 78 cases progesterone receptor (PR) was also assayed. ER positivity was significantly elevated in patients over 50 years while PR positivity rate was increased in patients under 50; ER-positive-PR-positive (ER + PR +) cases were evenly distributed among age groups. Correlations of ER and PR with histological features revealed that: a) high levels of ER were found in lobular, cribriform and colloid carcinomas; b) ER+ cases but not PR+ tumors were more frequent in well differentiated tumors; c) ER+, PR+ and ER+ +PR+ tumors were strongly related to the presence of elastosis; d) contrasting with ER-PR+ tumors, ER+ PR+ cases were associated with features indicative of a favorable prognosis. It is concluded that the determination of ER and PR in mammary malignant tumors brings information regarding the evolution of breast cancer in human patients and the biology of malignant mammary cells.