Breast Cancer in Tunisia: Association of Body Mass Index with Histopathological Aspects of Tumors

Abstract

Background: Previous studies have suggested a link between obesity and breast cancer (BC). However, there is no universal consensus, especially in population based studies. Because only few studies have been conducted on African women, we aimed here to assess the relationship between BMI at time of diagnosis and the BC histopathological features among Tunisian patients according to menopausal status using a hospital-based prospective cohort study. Materials and Methods: Clinical and pathological data were collected from 262 patients stratified on four groups according to their BMI. The relationship between BMI and histopathological features at diagnosis was analysed using univariate and multivariate analysis. Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to evaluate the performance of BMI in predicting of high tumor grade, in comparison to ki-67 index of proliferation. Results: Obesity was correlated with larger tumors, advanced grade and with ER-PRHer2+ BC subtype. An association of BMI with tumor size and tumor grade was observed in both premenopausal and postmenopausal women. Additionally, a significant association between BMI and ER+, ER+PR+Her2+ and ER-PR-Her2+ status was revealed for premenopausal patients, while only ER+PR+Her2+ was associated with BMI for postmenopausal women. Finally, our results showed that compared to Ki67 proliferation index, BMI is a useful prognostic marker of high grade BC tumors. Conclusions: These data are the first to show that in Tunisia obese women suffering from BC have significantly larger tumors and advanced tumor grade and that higher BMI might influence tumor characteristics and behavior.

Demographic Survey of Four Thousand Patients with 10 Common Cancers in North Eastern Iran over the Past Three Decades

“…The 20-year study of breast cancer in Tehran demonstrated a significant difference for the mean age (47.2, 48.8, 49.2 years) at time intervals respectively (1985-1995, 1996-2000 and 2001-2006) (Harirchi et al, 2010). In another study performed on five different provinces of Iran in 2000, the mean age at diagnosis was 46±12 years (Vostakolaei et al, 2012) and in the study of Hichem Bouguerra mean age of cases was 50.9±11.9 (Bouguerra et al, 2014). Breast cancer median age at the diagnosis was 46 years in 2004-2009 in ethnic disparity Iran study (Harirchi et al, 2010).…”

Breast Cancer in a Lagos Facility: Implications for the Institution of a Cancer Screening Programme

“…Basal-type cancers are seen in only 15% of this population [6]. On the other hand, triple-negative cancers are seen with greater frequency among blacks, accounting for as high as 60.5% of all breast cancer cases in some African studies [4,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. In our study, most cancers (41.9%) were of high nuclear grade, triple negative (42.1%), and unassociated with DCIS (52.3%).…”

Tumor-linked HER2 expression: association with obesity and lipid-related microenvironment

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