THE RELATIONSHIP OF P53 PROTEIN AND LYMPH-NODE METASTASES IN INVASIVEBREAST-CANCER

The p53 expression in invasive breast cancers from 106 patients was co rrelated with clinicopathological variables to ascertain its usefulnes s for estimating prognosis. The p53 expression was significantly assoc iated with the number of axillary lymph node metastases and the presen ce of internal mammary lymph node metastases; however, it was not asso ciated with age, menopausal status, histologic type, or tumor size. Al though p53 expression was a significant prognostic factor according to univariate analysis, it did not appear to be an independent prognosti c factor according to multivariate analysis. Thus, the prognostic powe r of p53 expression is likely to be weak and therefore probably of lim ited clinical value. Nevertheless, the number of patients in our study was small, and we believe that an investigation of a larger series of patients is indicated.