Background: In 2020, breast cancer (BC) became the most common cancer worldwide, including Egypt. Despite the extensive research throughout the past years, a detailed analysis of the patients, including the molecular and histopathological characteristics, is needed in order to tailor effective screening and treatment strategies for a particular population of BC patients. In this study, we aimed to explore the various characteristics and survival of a large cohort of BC patients in Northern Egypt. Materials and Methods: The recruited cohort in this study was composed of more than 4,000 BC patients who were managed in different centers across Northern Egypt for 10 years. Various clinical, demographic, and histopathological parameters were retrieved from the records. This included tumor size, grade, and stage, as well as the histological and molecular subtypes. Also, therapeutic modalities and responses, as well as disease-free survival (DFS, no recurrence or metastasis) and overall survival rates (OS, alive/dead), were collected. The SPSS 26.0 software was used for statistical analysis, and p<0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Invasive ductal carcinoma was found to be the most common histological type in the recruited cohort (94%). Interestingly, the median age of the patients’ cohort was 50 years, with most of the cohort presenting before the age of 55 years. Around 50% of the patients presented with advanced stage III. Further, the classification of the BC patients according to the Nottingham grading system revealed that the majority were graded as well and moderately differentiated BC (grades 1 and 2). Moreover, 77% of the patients belonged to the hormonal subtypes with positive estrogen (ER) and/or progesterone (PR) receptors. Intriguingly, 45.5% of BC patients were classified as luminal B subtype, 31.8% as luminal A group, 7.6% of BC patients as HER2-enriched subtype, and around 15% were triple-negative subtype. Such stratification by molecular subtyping of BC patients showed a significant difference in both the DFS and OS of the patients. Conclusion: Our findings highlight the different clinical, demographic, and histopathological characteristics of BC patients in Northern Egypt that might be different from other populations. Further studies are needed to identify early detection programs and management strategies for each population in order to improve BC patients’ clinical outcomes. No funding. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.

BackgroundThe average age at presentation of breast cancer in Egypt appears to be a decade earlier than in western countries. Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer‐related deaths in women under 40 years and survival rates for young women with breast cancer are lower than their older counterparts.Aimwas to assess the clinicopathological characteristics of breast cancer female patients less than 40 years and to compare them with their counterpart above the age of 40 years. In addition, the impact of age as an independent factor on survival was studied.Materials and methodsThis was a retrospective cohort study of an institutional database of all cases of breast carcinoma patients, whom prospectively were followed up during the period from January 2000 to December 2009, performed at Alexandria Main University Hospital, Egypt. After collecting data of breast carcinoma patients; clinicopathological characteristics, chosen management option and disease‐free survival (DFS), as well as overall survival (OS), were compared among the two age groups. Prognostic factors were evaluated for association with DFS and OS.ResultsIt has been found that the number of young patients (≤ 40 years) was 180 (25.4%) while the number of older patients was 529 (74.6%). The age of the patients varied between 21 years and 90 years (mean 47.8). The histopathological assessment showed that the incidence of infiltrated ductal carcinoma (IDC) was higher than the other types in both groups; 641 tumors (91.7 % from the total sample) were IDC; 165 (92.7 %) were in young age group and 476 (91.4 %) in old age group. There was no significant association between the two studied groups in relation to the histopathological types of breast carcinoma. Recurrence rates were significantly higher among young women (49.2%) when compared to older women (30.6%) (p=0.000). Five‐year DFS duration in young women was shorter, the mean follow‐up time of young patients was 44.4 months while in old age group, it was 51.6 months with a hazard ratio of 1.67 (95% CI: 1.117–2.499) greater than old patients, although there was no significant difference between the two groups as regard OS. Multivariate analyses identified larger tumor size, the presence of lymphovascular invasion and young age being ≤ 40 as independent factors associated with poor DFS.ConclusionYounger age (≤ 40 years) at the diagnosis of breast cancer can be considered an adverse prognostic factor for the development of locoregional recurrence or distant metastases.Support or Funding InformationThe study was not fundedThis abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.