B3
Basal-like and triple negative breast cancer frequently occur in Nigerian women
Johnson Agboola2, Namelo Wanangwa1, Emad Rakha1, A Banjo2, Somaia El-Sheikh1, Claire Paish1, Sarah Watts1, Ian Ellis1, Andy Green1
1University of Nottingham and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, Nottingham, UK, 2Olabisi Onabanjo University and Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital, Sagamu, Nigeria
Background
Although breast cancer incidence is lower in African-American women compared to White-American, breast cancer is a common disease in African countries such as Nigeria. Nigerian women have a higher risk for early-onset, high-grade, node-positive disease with a high mortality rate from breast cancer. Similar features have characterised hereditary and basal-like breast cancer, prompting speculation that risk factors could be genetically transmitted and the molecular portrait of these tumours are different to those of western women.
Method
In this study, we assessed the immunoprofile of breast cancer from Nigerian women compared with age-matched UK control group using 12 biomarkers of known relevance in breast cancer by immunohistochemistry.
Results
We confirm that Nigerian women presenting with breast cancer are more frequently premenopausal and their tumours are usually larger size, higher grade and lymph node and vascular invasion positive compared with the UK age-match cohort. Nigerian breast cancer showed association with triple-negative and basal-like classes of tumours and are less frequently of luminal-like class. Univariate analysis showed association between breast cancer in Nigerian women and ER, PgR, CK7/8 and E-cadherin negativity, p53 and MUC1 positivity but no association was found with HER2 expression. Nigerian women showed poorer outcome after development of breast cancer compared with UK women.
Conclusion
This study demonstrates that there are genetic and molecular differences between African and Western women breast cancer which cannot be explained only by age. Breast cancer in Nigerian patients tends to be aggressive with a dismal outcome.
