1Department of Preventive Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea. 2Research Institute of Food and Nutritional Sciences, Yonsei University. 3Department of Pathology, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea. 4Department of Surgery, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: This study was conducted to investigate whether breast cancer with p53 protein overexpression (p53+) and loss of p16 protein expression (p16-) shows different body size indicator (height, weight, body mass index) associations as compared with breast tumors without p53 protein overexpression and the loss of p16 expression (p53-, p16+).
MATERIALS AND METHODS: A hospital based case-control study was conducted among 92 women patients and 122 control subjects. The p53 protein overexpression and loss of p16 protein expression in the tissue sections of patients with breast cancer were determined using immunohistochemistry.
RESULTS: A total of 26 tumors (28%) demonstrated p53 overexpression and 35 tumors (46%) showed abnormal p16 expression. The heaviest women had a higher risk with p53- and p16+ breast tumors. The odds ratios (OR) adjusted for age, menopausal status, smoking, and drinking revealed a significant gradient of increasing risk of breast cancer with increasing BMI in p53- and p16+ breast cancer. The adjusted ORs for the highest quintile of BMI was 8.51 with p53+ tumors and 14.2 with p53- tumors, and 55.6 with p16+ tumors and 3.72 with p16- tumors.
p53 protein overexpression and the loss of p16 expression did not significantly correlate with nodal status, tumor size, estrogen or progesterone receptor status.
CONCLUSION: The study concluded that a strong association between p53-/p16+ tumors and BMI suggests the occurrence of p53-/p16+ tumors is related with obesity as compared to p53-/p16+ tumors.
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