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Race and Triple Negative Breast Cancer
K P Siziopikou1* and M. Cobleigh21Department of Pathology, Northwestern University /Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA
2Department of Medicine, Section of Medical Oncology, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL, USA
- *Corresponding Author:
- Kalliopi P. Siziopikou, MD, PhD
Professor of Pathology
Director of Breast Pathology
Northwestern University/Feinberg School of Medicine
251 East Huron Street, Galter 7-132 O, Chicago, IL 60611
Tel: 312 926 6530
E-mail: p-siziopikou@northwestern.edu
Received Date: September 12, 2011; Accepted Date: November 14, 2011; Published Date: November 15, 2011
Citation: Siziopikou KP, Cobleigh M (2011) Race and Triple Negative Breast Cancer. J Clinic Experiment Pathol S1:001 doi: 10.4172/2161-0681.S1-001
Copyright: © 2011 Siziopikou KP, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Breast cancer is understood to represent not a single disease but a heterogeneous group of tumors with different biologic behavior, prognosis and response to treatment. Luminal A, luminal B, HER2 overexpressing, triple negative and basal subtypes of breast carcinomas are now considered distinct entities with unique biologic characteristics and clinical outcomes. Classic epidemiologic studies have also shown that race plays a role in the incidence and ultimate prognosis of breast cancer; specifically while the incidence of breast carcinomas is higher in Caucasian women, African-American patients have worse overall prognosis with higher breast cancer mortality rates. While the impact of socioeconomic and health care access factors is not to be dismissed, unique biologic characteristics in this patient population may play an important role in the difference in patient outcome. In this report we evaluated possible racial differences in the incidence of the basal subtype of triple negative breast carcinomas in a large cohort of consecutive breast cancer patients.
