Carcinoembryonic antigen expression and peanut agglutinin binding in primary breast cancer and lymph node metastases; lack of correlation with clinical, histopathological, biochemical and morphometric features

In a group of 335 patients with primary breast carcinoma the presence of immunoreactive carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and the binding of the lectin peanut agglutinin (PNA) in the primary carcinoma and in axillary lymph node metastases were investigated. The correlation between these results and a variety of established clinical, histopathologic, morphometric and biochemical prognosticators was studied. These features included lymph node status, tumour diameter, tumour type, nuclear grade, histologic grade, oestrogen receptor status, mitotic activity index and a number of nuclear measurements. The results indicate that CEA immunoreactivity of and PNA binding to tumour cells in primary breast carcinomas or lymph node metastases do not correlate with established prognostic factors in breast cancer.