Cathepsin D and Prognosis in Breast Cancer
Open Access
- 1 February 1990
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Massachusetts Medical Society in New England Journal of Medicine
- Vol. 322 (5), 297-302
- https://doi.org/10.1056/nejm199002013220504
Abstract
We investigated the possibility that cathepsin D, an estrogen-induced lysosomal protease, might have value as a prognostic factor in breast cancer by studying frozen tissue specimens from 397 patients. We measured the 34-kd mature form of the enzyme by Western blot assay and densitometry. Among 199 patients with node-negative disease, but not among 198 with node-positive disease, high levels of cathepsin D proved to be a significant predictor of reduced disease-free survival (median follow-up, 64 months), either as a continuous variable (log cathepsin D; P = 0.018) or as a dichotomous variable with an optimized cutoff point (P = 0.0001). Results were similar for overall survival (P = 0.009 and 0.0001, respectively).Keywords
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