[Clinical significance of tumor associated glycoprotein-72 expression in pPrimary breast carcinoma].

Aim: To investigate the expression of tumor associated glycoprotein-72 (TAG-72) in primary breast carcinoma, and to evaluate its clinical significance in clinicopathological status and prognosis of patients with primary breast carcinoma.

Methods: 118 patients with primary breast carcinoma were examined for TAG-72 expression by SABC immunohistochemistry. Then, the clinical outcome of the patients after a follow-up of 5 years was determined in 92 out of 118 patients. The correlation of TAG-72 expression in primary breast carcinoma with the prognosis of patients was also analysis.

Results: The positive rates of TAG-72 in breast carcinoma tissues were 78.81% (93/118). Clinicopathological parameters of breast carcinoma and clinical outcome of the patients were associated with TAG-72 expression. TAG-72 was expressed more frequently in breast carcinoma tissues with larger neoplastic diameter (P<0.05), higher TNM stage (P<0.05), poorer histological differentiation (P<0.01) and lymph nodes metastasis (P<0.01). Moreover, the survival rate of the patients with breast carcinoma expressing TAG-72 was significantly lower than the patients without TAG-72 expression (P<0.01).

Conclusion: The results suggest that the expression of TAG-72 may be an important feature of primary breast carcinomas. The detection of this marker with cancerous staging may increase the ability of investigators to predict the prognosis of patients with breast carcinomas.