Estimation of tubular differentiation in female libyan breast cancer

Abstract

Background Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in the world. It is also the most cause of deaths among female cancers patients [1,2]. Breast cancer is actively studied, but many aspects still remain unclear, including the special features associated with individual countries. The breast cancer prognosis can be evaluated by traditional features such as tumor size, and lymph node status [3]. The histological grading system is also associated with high prognostic potential [4], but is still subjective, and leaves a large group of patients with unclear prognosis [5]. Quantitative histopathology can be expected to be more reproducible than the subjective methods [6]. Earlier studies in breast cancer have suggested that there are variations in nuclear size features, proliferative and apoptotic activity. It is not well known, however, how these differences are reflected in tubular differentiation. Many studies have suggested that tubular differentiation could have potential as a prognosticator in different adenocarcinomas [7-9]. Other studies, however, do not agree [10-14]. The aim of this study is to focus on the role of TFD in the evaluation of Libyan breast cancer prognosis and the relation of TFD with clinicopathological features. We found this research attractive because through such a study we could compare Libyan breast cancers with those from Finnish (European) and Nigerian (Central African) patients, after we used same method described by Kronqvist et al., [15] and Ikpatt et al., [21]. Methods The study was performed on paraffin embedded Libyan female breast cancer samples. All cases were diagnosed at