S-phase fractions of breast cancer predict overall and post-relapse survival

Abstract We studied the correlation of S-phase fraction (SPF) with clinical outcome in 127 pre- or perimenopausal patients with breast cancers treated by neoadjuvant chemotherapy from October 1986 to June 1990. When the patients were analysed using the median value of the SPF as a threshold, there was a small but non-significant difference in favour of low SPF tumours for metastasis-free survival. SPF was the only parameter predicting overall survival in multivariate analysis ( P P = 0.002). Our current results, in a homogeneous series with a median follow-up of over 5 years, emphasise the importance of proliferation-related parameters for breast cancer management.