[Immunophenotype and evolution of breast carcinomas: a comparison between very young and postmenopausal women].

Purpose: The objective of this study was to evaluate the clinical, pathological and molecular characteristics in very young women and postmenopausal women with breast cancer.

Methods: We selected 106 cases of breast cancer of very young women (<35 years) and 130 cases of postmenopausal women. We evaluated clinical characteristics of patients (age at diagnosis, ethnic group, family history of breast cancer, staging, presence of distant metastases, overall and disease-free survival), pathological characteristics of tumors (tumor size, histological type and grade, axillary lymph nodes status) and expression of molecular markers (hormone receptors, HER2, p53, p63, cytokeratins 5 and 14, and EGFR), using immunohistochemistry and tissue microarray.