Open AccessImmunoglobulin Kappa C Predicts Overall Survival in Node-Negative Breast Cancer
Author(s) -
Zonglin Chen,
Aslihan GerholdAy,
Susanne Gebhard,
Daniel Boehm,
Christine Solbach,
Antje Lebrecht,
Marco Johannes Battista,
Isabel Sicking,
Cristina Cotarelo,
Cristina Cadenas,
Rosemarie Marchan,
Joanna D. Stewart,
Mathias Gehrmann,
Heinz Koelbl,
Jan G. Hengstler,
Marcus Schmidt
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0044741
Subject(s) - breast cancer , medicine , hazard ratio , oncology , univariate analysis , estrogen receptor , proportional hazards model , survival analysis , cancer , multivariate analysis , confidence interval
Background Biomarkers of the immune system are currently not used as prognostic factors in breast cancer. We analyzed the association of the B cell/plasma cell marker immunoglobulin kappa C (IGKC) and survival of untreated node-negative breast cancer patients. Material and Methods IGKC expression was evaluated by immunostaining in a cohort of 335 node-negative breast cancer patients with a median follow-up of 152 months. The prognostic significance of IGKC for disease-free survival (DFS) and breast cancer-specific overall survival (OS) was evaluated with Kaplan-Meier survival analysis as well as univariate and multivariate Cox analysis adjusted for age at diagnosis, pT stage, histological grade, estrogen receptor (ER) status, progesterone receptor (PR) status, Ki-67 and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2) status. Results 160 patients (47.7%) showed strong expression of IGKC. Univariate analysis showed that IGKC was significantly associated with DFS (P = 0.017, hazard ratio [HR] = 0.570, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.360–0.903) and OS (P = 0.011, HR = 0.438, 95% CI = 0.233–0.822) in the entire cohort. The significance of IGKC was especially strong in ER negative and in luminal B carcinomas. In multivariate analysis IGKC retained its significance independent of established clinical factors for DFS (P = 0.004, HR = 0.504, 95% CI = 0.315–0.804) as well as for OS (P = 0.002, HR = 0.371, 95% CI = 0.196–0.705). Conclusion Expression of IGKC has an independent protective impact on DFS and OS in node-negative breast cancer.