The over and underexpression of a newly identified set of genes help doctors to spot whether or not a woman is at risk for hormone receptor-positive or hormone receptor-negative breast cancer.

"We should not expose women at risk for hormone-insensitive breast cancer to the side effects of preventive medications that we know will not work for them," Khan said. "Moreover, if we knew who these women were, we could focus on them in terms of designing new studies to find a solution for preventing hormone-insensitive cancer."
Khan and colleagues sought to find a way to identify women at risk for estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer by examining gene expression in the unaffected breasts of women who had a primary breast cancer of known estrogen-receptor status.
They used this approach because prior research has indicated that if women who have had cancer in one breast subsequently develop a cancer in their second breast, the second cancer is likely to have hormone-receptor status that resembles the first cancer.
Using this logic, Khan and colleagues performed fine-needle aspiration on the unaffected breasts of 15 women with estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer and 15 women with estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer. They validated their results in a second group of women: 12 with estrogen receptor-positive disease, 12 with estrogen receptor-negative disease and 12 healthy controls. The cases in each set were matched by age, race and menopausal status.
The researchers identified 13 genes with significantly higher expression levels in samples from estrogen receptor-negative women. Eight of these genes were associated with lipid metabolism.
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The researchers also found significant overexpression of four of the genes associated with lipid metabolism - DHRS2, HMGCS2, HPGD and ACSL3 - in estrogen receptor-negative samples when compared with healthy women. In estrogen receptor-positive samples, two different lipid metabolism-associated genes - UGT2B11 and APOD - were underexpressed.
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Source-Newswise