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Progesterone and estrogen receptors in pregnant and premenopausal non-pregnant normal human breast

  • Epidemiology
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Abstract

We report here our studies of nuclear staining for the progesterone and estrogen receptors (PRA, PRB, ERα) and cell proliferation (MIB1) in the breast terminal duct lobular unit epithelium of 26 naturally cycling premenopausal women and 30 pregnant women (median 8.1 weeks gestation). Square root transformations of the PRA, PRB and ERα values, and a logarithmic transformation of the MIB1 values, were made to achieve more normal distributions of the values. PRA expression decreased from a mean of 17.8% of epithelial cells in cycling subjects to 6.2% in pregnant subjects (P = 0.013). MIB1 expression increased from 1.7% in cycling subjects to 16.0% in pregnant subjects (P < 0.001). PRB and ERα expression was slightly lower in pregnant subjects but the differences were not statistically significant. Sixteen of the non-pregnant subjects were nulliparous and ten were parous so that we had limited power to detect changes associated with parity. PRA was statistically significantly lower in parous women than in nulliparous women (32.2% in nulliparous women vs. 10.2%; P = 0.014). PRB (23.5 vs. 12.9%), ERα (14.4 vs. 8.6%) and MIB1 (2.2 vs. 1.2%) were also lower in parous women, but the differences were not statistically significant. The marked decreases in PRA in pregnancy and in parous women has also been found in the rat. A reduction in PRA expression may be a useful marker of the reduction in risk with pregnancy and may be of use in evaluating the effect of any chemoprevention regimen aimed at mimicking pregnancy. Short-term changes in PRA expression while the chemoprevention is being administered may be a more useful marker.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to express our sincerest gratitude to the women who agreed to be part of these studies. We also wish to express our thanks to Ms. Peggy Wan and Ms. A. Rebecca Anderson for extensive help with the management of the study and the statistical analysis. Drs. Christine Clarke and Patricia Mote provided very valuable advice on certain aspects of immunohistochemistry and pointed us to the best antibody for detection of PRB; we are most grateful for this help. This work was supported by a Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Breast Cancer Research Program Grant BC 044808, by the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center Core Grant P30 CA14089, funds from the endowment established by Flora L. Thornton for the Chair of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and an anonymous donor grant to DT. The funding sources had no role in this report. Disclosure statement: The authors declare that they have nothing to disclose.

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Correspondence to Malcolm C. Pike.

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DeShawn Taylor, Celeste Leigh Pearce, Linda Hovanessian-Larsen, Susan Downey are to be considered joint first authors of this report based on their pivotal contributions to the studies reported here.

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Taylor, D., Pearce, C.L., Hovanessian-Larsen, L. et al. Progesterone and estrogen receptors in pregnant and premenopausal non-pregnant normal human breast. Breast Cancer Res Treat 118, 161–168 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-009-0322-4

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