肿瘤相关巨噬细胞的过表达示腋结阴性乳腺癌预后不良

Objecive: To explore the significance of expression of tumor-associated macrophages (TAM) in node-negative breast cancer. Methods: Immunohistochemical staining was used to analyze TAMs expression levels in patients with breast cancer and compared these data with the clinicopathological features of these patients. Results: Breast cancer patients with TAMs high-infiltration had significantly lower DFS and 5-year survival rates than patients with TAMs low-infiltration. In addition, for patients with negative axillary lymph node metastasis, high-infiltration of TAMs indicated markedly poorer survival rate than low-infiltration arm. Multivariate analysis further confirmed that increased density of TAMs was an independent prognostic factor for patients with breast cancer. Conclusion: High infiltration of TAM indicated poor survival rate for patients with node-negative breast cancer. The infiltration of TAMs is a new, important risk factor for node-negative breast cancer recurrence.