Differences in breast carcinoma characteristics in newly diagnosed African-American and Caucasian patients: a single-institution compilation compared with the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database.

Background: Breast carcinomas in African-American patients appear to be more aggressive than in Caucasian patients due to multifactorial differences.

Methods: The authors compiled pathology data from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database regarding stage, histologic grade, and estrogen receptor (ER) expression in breast carcinomas diagnosed in 197,274 African-American and Caucasian patients between 1990 and 2000, and the same information, along with nuclear grade, Ki-67, c-erb-B2, and p53 expression, in 2230 African-American and Caucasian patients diagnosed at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital between 1995 and 2002. Immunohistochemical markers were assayed in paraffin-embedded, formalin-fixed tissue stained with hematoxylin and eosin using antibodies to these proteins, with differences in expression analyzed by the chisquare test.