Analysis of Clinico-Pathological Characteristics of Indian Breast Cancers Shows Conservation of Specific Features in the Hormone Receptor Sub-Types

Background: Clinical epidemiology studies of breast cancer in India have reported younger age at detection, presentation at a later stage with a greater proportion of Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC). The aim of this study was to examine the standard clinic-pathological variables in the hormone-receptor based sub-types for patterns indicative of intrinsic differences from that reported in Western, Caucasian women. Methods: Clinico-pathological variables from 645 patients who were diagnosed with breast cancer during 2012 at the regional cancer were retrospectively analyzed for clinical and immunohistochemistry details. Results: The median age at first diagnosis is 48 years which is decade earlier than that reported in Western case-series, 65% were lymph-node positive, and 33% of all cases were Triple negative Breast Cancers. Sub-type specific examination of tumor size and lymph-node (LN) status showed the HER2 positive tumors to have the highest proportion of tumors that were pT4 and 75% were LN positive. Conversely, despite 92% of TNBCs being grade 3, 40% of them were LN negative. Conclusion: We confirm the three cardinal clinical epidemiological features reported by other Indian centres. The clinical behavior of the HER2 positive and TNBC sub-types are no different from that reported in Western caseseries suggesting that these aspects are innate and conserved.