Inflammatory breast cancer in Tunisia: epidemiological and clinical trends.

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is characterized by a peculiar geographic distribution in incidence, being described as more common in Tunisia and the region of North Africa. The authors performed a systematic review of published literature on rapidly progressing breast cancer and IBC in Tunisia and analyzed the evolution in epidemiology, clinical presentation, treatment, and therapeutic results. They collected, analyzed, and compared all the indexed Tunisian articles about rapidly progressing breast cancer and IBC since the 1970s opening of the Institut Salah Azaiz Institute in Tunis.

Dermal lymphatic emboli in inflammatory and noninflammatory breast cancer: a French-Tunisian joint study in 337 patients.

Background: We studied whether dermal lymphatic emboli (DLE) add independent prognostic information to the clinical definition of inflammatory breast cancer (IBC).

Patients And Methods: The study was performed in 2 centers, one each in France and Tunisia. For every patient with IBC, 1-3 patients with noninflammatory breast cancer (non-IBC) were included.

Increasing evidence for a human breast carcinoma virus with geographic differences.

Background: An early immunologic study suggesting that a virus similar to the mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV) was associated highly with breast carcinoma in Tunisian patients, compared with patients in the United States, led the authors to examine different breast carcinoma populations by using more current molecular techniques.

Methods: Thirty-nine paraffin blocks were selected for sequencing of the 250-base pair segment of the MMTV from patients with breast carcinoma who were seen and treated at the Institut Salah Azaiz in Tunisia. Fifteen of those blocks were examined under code by a second laboratory, which used a different methodology and was blinded to the results of the first laboratory, and 14 blocks were analyzed successfully.

Microvessel density, expression of estrogen receptor alpha, MIB-1, p53, and c-erbB-2 in inflammatory breast cancer.

Purpose And Experimental Design: The purpose is to define intratumoral microvessel density (MVD) and potential biological markers that correlate with inflammatory breast cancer (IBC), we examined MVD, estrogen receptor a (ER) status, MIB-1 proliferation index, p53, and c-erbB-2 by immunohistochemistry in archival specimens from 67 women diagnosed with breast cancer with or without the inflammatory phenotype at the Institut Salah Azaiz (Tunis, Tunisia).

Results: The moderate (25-50/x400 field) to high microvessel count (>50/x400 field) was observed in 23 (51%) of 45 IBC tumors compared with 3 (14%) of 22 non-IBC tumors (P = 0.0031; chi(2) test).