Correlation of pretreatment serum tissue polypeptide specific antigen (TPS) with prognosis in primary breast cancer

The aim of this study was to explore the correlation of pretreatment serum tissue polypeptide specific antigen (TPS) with prognosis in primary breast cancer. A total of 361 patients with grades I–III breast cancer had been followed up from January 2001 to February 2011. Serumal TPS level was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA). Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to investigate associations between pretreatment TPS level and clinicopathological parameters and patient outcomes. First, at the univariate analysis, the expression of TPS was related with some clinicopathological traditional prognostic factors such as tumor size (P = 0.030), histologic grade (P = 0.001) and lymph node status (P = 0.008). Second, overall survival were significantly shorter among patients with elevated pretreatment serum TPS (P = 0.038). However, finally, multivariate Cox regression indicated that the level of pretreatment serum TPS was not an independent prognostic parameter for overall survival in primarily breast cancer patients (P > 0.05). The expression of pretreatment serum TPS is closely correlated with clinicopathology parameters and overall survival of patients with primarily breast cancer, but its level has no independent prognostic value.