a survey in the basal like breast carcinoma phenotype in north east of iran

Background: breast carcinoma is not a homogenous disease. it is divided into 5 pathological subtypes of luminal1, luminal2, strongly her2 positive, basal like, and normal breast like. basal like breast carcinoma that accounts for about 15% of all breast cancers has an aggressive clinical behavior with the features of high nuclear grade, negative estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and her2 reactivity (triple negative). objectives: we aimed at identifying the prevalence of basaloid phenotype among triple negative (tn) cases in our region via immunohistochemistry (ihc) staining using basaloid markers. methods: we reviewed breast cancer patients in omid and imam reza hospitals, mashhad, iran, between 2003 and 2007. we obtained the paraffin blocks from tn cases for immune-staining using cytokeratin 5/6 (ck5/6), cytokeratin 14 (ck14) and epidermal growth factor receptor1 (egfr1) markers. results: the incidence of tn diseaseamongbreast cancers was 21% (156/747). based on ihc reactivity with at least one of the basaloid markers, from 59 available samples, 44 (75.4%) were basaloid. conclusions: in our region, most triple negative tumors were basal like breast cancer (blbc). among these cases, most immunereactivity was observed for egfr1, followed by ck14 and ck5/6.