ANGIOGENESIS IN BREAST-CANCER IS RELATED TO AGE BUT NOT TO OTHER PROGNOSTIC PARAMETERS

Angiogenesis is essential for tumour growth and metastasis. In spite o f its relevant biological significance, recent studies have produced c onflicting results regarding the capacity of microvessel quantificatio ns in breast carcinomas to predict patients' outcome and the existence of metastasis. In order to provide further information in this issue, we evaluated tumour angiogenesis in a series of 45 primary breast car cinomas (mean age: 55.3 +/- 14.2) and examined their association with established or potentially useful prognostic parameters. Microvessels were highlighted by immunohistochemical staining for factor VIII-relat ed antigen and counted in the three most vascularized areas in a 200x field (0.74 mm(2)) by four observers simultaneously. Results were anal ysed for the average vessel count of each case. The mean intratumoural microvessel count was 57.7 +/- 24.4 (range: 24.3 to 127.7). We found a statistically significant association between angiogenesis and age. The microvessels count in patients younger than 50 years was 67.8 +/- 26.4, from 51 to 70 years, 52.0 +/- 22.8 and over 71 years, 46.1 +/- 1 4.2 (p = 0.03). Node positive patients had slightly higher microvessel counts (60.3 +/- 25.3) than node negative ones (54.4 +/- 23.5); this difference was not significant (p = 0.42), even when we considered eac h age group per se. No association was found between angiogenesis and tumour size, histologic grade, estrogen receptor, MIB-1 index, ploidy and expression of p53 and c-erbB-2. Our results suggest that invasive breast carcinoma-induced angiogenesis is age-dependent.