Cadherins as predictive markers of nodal metastasis in breast cancer

Adhesion molecules, particularly cadherins play a pivotal role in cancer in vasion and metastasis, Because the therapeutic management of tumors with an d without nodal metastasis differs considerably, our idea was to identify t umors with metastatic potential. We studied the expression of E-cadherin an d P-cadherin immunohistochemically in 51 cases of breast cancer that includ ed 29 node-negative and 22 node-positive cases. Expression of the cadherins was mainly membranous, with cytoplasmic staining in a few lesions. Both E- cadherin and P-cadherin showed significant down-regulation of their express ion in node-positive tumors in comparison to node-negative tumors. Logistic regression analysis revealed that the positive expression of E-cadherin an d P-cadherin showed low odds ratios of 0.1 and 0.2, respectively, and were statistically significant. On multivariate analysis, both the cadherins wer e found to be of independent prognostic value. This suggests that cadherin expression could be a marker of nodal metastasis. An observation of interes t was that the expression of E-cadherin and P-cadherin were highly correlat ed (correlation coefficient = 0.5873), which requires further evaluation fo r confirmation of a common regulatory pathway that could be activated in th e early onset of nodal metastasis.