What About Breast Cancer In Men
Breast cancer in men is rare less than 1 percent of all breast cancer cases but it can still occur, according to the ACS. A mans risk of getting breast cancer during his lifetime is about
The stages of breast cancer relate to how much the cancer has grown and how far its spread. Generally, the earlier breast cancer is diagnosed and treated, the higher the chances for long-term survival.
| Stage 0 | This is a precancerous stage with no invasive cancer cells. |
| Stage 1 | The tumor is small and localized to the breast. There may be a small amount of cancer in nearby lymph nodes. |
| Stage 2 | The tumor is still localized to the breast but is larger and may have spread to several nearby lymph nodes. |
| Stage 3 | This stage includes cancers that have spread to the skin, chest wall, or multiple lymph nodes in or near the breast. |
| Stage 4 | This is metastatic breast cancer, meaning its spread to one or more distant parts of the body, most commonly to the bones, lungs, or liver. |
The stages of breast cancer are based on the following factors:
- tumor size
- whether the lymph nodes contain cancer cells
- whether the cancer has metastasized, meaning its spread to other, more distant parts of the body
Since 2018, the following factors have also been used to determine breast cancer stage:
Endocrine Therapy In Ilc
Finally, PELOPS trial is currently evaluating the use of neo-adjuvant palbociclib in combination with ET in hormone receptor positive BC. Moreover, this trial will compare the effectiveness of letrozole versus tamoxifen in cohorts of patients with ILC, through measurement of the anti-proliferative activity. Therefore, this may prove vital in guiding and informing the future endocrine treatment of ILC.
At the last ESMO congress , the results of two randomized phase III studies investigating the efficacy of CDK4/6 inhibitors in addition to standard adjuvant ET in high-risk early BC patients have been presented. In particular, MonarchE trial reported a significant advantage of 3.5% in term of invasive DFS in patients who received abemaciclib plus ET compared to those treated with ET alone . Conversely, in the PALLAS trial, the addition of palbociclib to adjuvant ET did not prolong invasive DFS versus ET alone . These conflicting results may be due to several differences between the two trials such as study populations , drug exposure and follow up duration. However, none of the two studies provided a subgroup analysis for patients with ILC. Key characteristics of ILC are summarized in Table 2.
Table 2 Summary of Key Characteristics of ILC.
Invasive Lobular Carcinoma Diagnosis
Your doctor will start with a physical exam of your breasts and nearby lymph nodes. If they feel any problems like thickening, hardening, or swelling, you may have tests including:
- Mammogram. ILC can be hard to spot on a mammogram, which makes X-ray pictures of your breast, because the cancer cells tend to grow in a line rather than in a mass.
- Ultrasound. Sound waves create images of the inside of your breast. An ultrasound may be better at finding ILC than a mammogram.
- Biopsy. If they find a suspicious area, your doctor will order a biopsy to check the cells. Most biopsies use a needle to take out a sample of cells from the breast. In some cases, the doctor will remove a larger sample or the entire tumor.
- CT scan. This is a powerful X-ray that makes detailed pictures inside your body.
- PET scan. Along with a CT scan, this test can help find cancer in lymph nodes and other areas.
- MRI. This uses strong magnets and radio waves to make pictures of the breast and things inside your body.
- Bone scan. A radioactive material called a tracer is injected into your arm. It shows up on pictures to tell your doctor whether cancer may have traveled to your bones.
- The results of your exams will tell your doctor whether you have cancer and whether itâs spread so they can recommend the best treatment options.
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Breast Mri And Biopsy
Magnetic resonance imaging uses magnetic radio waves rather than radioactive waves and helps collect detailed images of the breast. Breast MRIs are often used to guide a biopsy of the area in concern.
Breast biopsies consist of taking a small sample of tissue by making a small incision and using a needle to collect samples. A biopsy is needed to make a definitive diagnosis of lobular breast cancer.
Outlook For Invasive Lobular Carcinoma
Cancer affects everyone differently. Your outlook may depend on things like how early youâre diagnosed and how well your body responds to treatment.
In general, about 90% of all women with breast cancer live at least 5 years after diagnosis. While there isnât much information about specific types of breast cancer, these survival rates are tracked by stage at diagnosis or how far the cancer has spread:
- Localized : 98.9% live at least 5 years.
- Regional : 85.7% live at least 5 years.
- Distant : 28.1% live at least 5 years.
Show Sources
Breastcancer.org: âLobular carcinoma in situ ,â âInvasive lobular carcinoma,â âBone Scans,â âLCIS and Breast Cancer Risk,â âTreatments for LCIS,â âTest for Diagnosing ILC,â and âSystemic Treatments for ILC: Chemotherapy, Hormonal Therapy, Targeted Therapies,â âSigns and Symptoms of ILC,â âLocal Treatments for ILC: Surgery and Radiation Therapy.â
Breast Cancer Network of Strength: âLobular carcinoma in situâ and âInfiltrating lobular carcinoma.â
National Cancer Institute: âLobular carcinoma in situ,â âCancer Stat Facts: Female Breast Cancer.â
American Cancer Society: âWhat is breast cancer?â and “Special Section: Breast Carcinoma in Situ,” âChemotherapy for Breast Cancer,â âRadiation for Breast Cancer.â
College of American Pathologists: âLobular carcinoma in situ,â “Invasive lobular carcinoma.â
MedlinePlus: âTamoxifen.â
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Immunoreactive Features Typical Of Pleomorphic Breast Carcinoma
Almost all pleomorphic breast cancer tumors will stain negative for estrogen receptors, and most are also negative for progesterone receptors. They are also generally negative for Bcl-2. However, pleomorphic breast carcinoma tends to be positive for PCNA and AE1/AE3. p53 tends to be expressed in about two thirds of pleomorphic breast cancer tumors, and S-100 in perhaps 40% of tumors. Expressions of C-erbB-2, PCNA, S-100, EMA, and p53 are frequently associated with promotion of tumor cell growth and metastasis through different modes of actions, are often suggestive of a poorer breast cancer prognosis.
Furthermore, the lack of expression of ER, PR, and Bcl-2 tends to occur in tumors with high histological grade, all contributing to the poorer outlook generally associated with pleomorphic breast carcinoma. The image below shows positive PCNA and p53 staining on the cell nuclei of a pleomorphic breast carcinoma tumor.
Diagnosis Of Invasive Lobular Carcinoma
The earlier youre diagnosed with ILC and start treatment, the better your outlook. As with other types of cancer, early stages of ILC are likely to be treated more easily with fewer complications. This typically but not always leads to a complete recovery and low recurrence rates.
But compared with the much more common IDC, early diagnosis of ILC can be a challenge. Thats because the growth and spread patterns of ILC are more difficult to detect on routine mammograms and breast exams. ILC tumors are likely to have multiple origins, and they grow in single-file lines rather than a lump.
The first step in a diagnosis of ILC is a breast examination. Your doctor will feel your breast for a thickening or hardening of the tissue. Theyll also look for any swelling in the lymph nodes under your arms or around your collarbone.
Other diagnostic tests may include:
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How Quickly Breast Cancer Develops
The actual time it takes for breast cancer to grow from a single cancer cell to a cancerous tumor is unknown. Part of the reason is that estimates based on doubling time assume that the rate stays constant at all times as the tumor grows.
If this were true, cancer with a doubling time of 200 days would take 20 years to develop into a detectable tumor. A doubling time of 100 days would take 10 years to be found on exam. In contrast, a breast tumor with a doubling time of 20 days would take only 2 years to develop.
Most studies have found the average doubling time to be between 50 days and 200 days. This means it’s possible that breast cancers diagnosed now began at least 5 years earlier, but again, this assumes the growth rate is constant. It is not.
Where Does Invasive Lobular Carcinoma Spread
The word invasive in the ILC name means that the cancer has spread. It may have spread to breast tissues surrounding the lobules where it began or beyond that to other organs of the body. If the cancer cells have not yet spread, the cancer is referred to as lobular carcinoma in situ .
Over time, ILC can spread to lymph nodes and to further parts of the body. When ILC does spread to other organs, doctors call this metastasizing. It most commonly spreads to:
- bone
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Symptoms Of Invasive Lobular Carcinoma
In many cases, invasive lobular carcinoma causes no symptoms and is found after your doctor sees a suspicious area on a screening mammogram.
In other cases, you or your doctor may feel a thick or swollen area in your breast. ILC is less likely than other breast cancers to cause a hard lump. Any of the following unusual changes in the breast can be a first sign of invasive lobular carcinoma:
-
determine if certain clinical trials may be a good option for you
Generally, the stage of invasive lobular carcinoma is described as a number on a scale of I through IV. Stages I, II, and III describe early-stage cancers and stage IV describes cancers that have spread outside the breast to other parts of the body, such as the bones or liver.
Once a diagnosis of invasive lobular carcinoma has been made, your doctor will do more testing to collect information on the characteristics of the cancer. These tests, as well as the results of your biopsy, make up the parts of your pathology report.
Information commonly collected as part of a pathology report include:
Treatments for invasive lobular carcinoma may include:
Diagnosing Invasive Lobular Breast Cancer
In many women the cancer is found during breast screening.
Its important that you see your GP if you have any symptoms. They may refer you to a specialist breast clinic. At the breast clinic the doctor or specialist nurse takes your medical history and examines your breasts. They also feel for any swollen lymph nodes under your arms and at the base of your neck.
You have some of the following tests:
- a mammogram
- an ultrasound
- a biopsy a small sample of cells or tissue is taken from your breast and looked at under a microscope
- a breast MRI scan this scan uses magnetic fields to create images of the breast tissue
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Pleomorphic Breast Cancer May Also Develop In Lobules
There is also kind of pleomorphic breast carcinoma which develops in the breast lobules rather than the ducts, termed invasive pleomorphic lobular carcinoma , which may also now be considered a unique sub-type of breast cancer.
Pleomorphic tumor cells can also occur in other kinds of breast cancer, such as carcinoma with osteoclastic giant cells, mammary sarcoma, and in metastatic tumors, so there is a danger for an initial misdiagnosis.
The average age in which women tend to develop pleomorphic breast cancer is around 51-55 years of age, though it has known to develop in women as young as the mid 20s, and as late as the 80s to 90s. In most cases, pleomorphic breast carcinoma is discovered clinically as a palpable mass, with a minority found via screening mammography.
In many instances pleomorphic breast cancer is initially diagnosed as sarcoma , and later determined to be pleomorphic breast carcinoma. A spindle-cell component is found in up to 40% of pleomorphic breast carcinoma tumors, sometimes accounting for more than 25% of the total tumor mass.
Lobular Breast Cancer Comes Into The Research Spotlight
The first time Leigh Pate heard the term was when she got a phone call from her doctor following a series of diagnostic tests. The mammogram had been clean â like so many before it â but the ultrasound and biopsy told another story.
âAfter I hung up, I went to my computer and typed in âglobular breast cancer,ââ said Pate, a 51-year-old public policy consultant from Seattle of her diagnosis seven years ago. âGoogle had to correct me.â
Pate went through two surgeries, five months of chemotherapy, 33 courses of radiation and four years of tamoxifen, a daily pill that cuts off the fuel source for this very estrogen receptorâpositive disease. By the end of her treatment and recovery, she not only knew what lobular breast cancer was, she was determined to shine a spotlight on this idiosyncratic subtype.
âI started asking about lobular and realized they donât know enough,â she said. âItâs lumped together and treated just like regular ER+ breast cancer. But lobular presents differently, it behaves differently and it has different subtypes and variants.â
Patients like Pate arenât the only ones pushing for more lobular research.
President and executive director of Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and head of medical oncology at the University of Washington, Davidson was the powerhouse who built University of Pittsburghâs strong lobular research program before joining Fred Hutch.
Lobular, it would seem, is finally having its day.
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Breast Cancer Survival Rates For All Types Of Breast Cancers
Breast cancer survival rates and prognosis are determined by so many different factors that it is always difficult to make generalizations.
NOTE: this page has been recently updated with the most up-to-date statistics. Prognosis has improved so much because breast cancer treatments have become more effective since this page was first created. Remember that survival is better than listed here. Most importantly, ask your oncologist and specialist team, who keep current with the latest statistics and best treatments.
The Coordinated Activity Of Many Tfs Characterizes Ilc And Idc Tumors
We inferred sample-specific TF motif activities based on genome-wide chromatin accessibility data using CREMA . This allowed us to map chromatin accessibility profiles to a lower-dimensional inferred TF activity space, largely preserving the relationships between samples. Inferred activities of 29 TF motifs were significantly associated with histological subtypes by false discovery rate -corrected p value< 0.05 and absolute mean activity difference> 0.035 . We found that Early Growth Response 1 , TEAD family , SOX family, , and RUNX3_BLC11A TFs had significantly higher activities in ILCs than IDCs . Similarly, FOX family , paired like homeodomain , PBX3, and HSF4 had significantly higher activities in IDCs than ILCs . Consistently, EGR1 mRNA is upregulated in ILCs and TEAD increases the expression of nuclear Yes-associated protein , a transcription coactivator playing a role in cell proliferation and invasion in ILCs . However, other TFs have not been studied in the context of ILCs and IDCs. TF activities from the same families were also correlated across samples . Overall, these results were consistent with the motif enrichment analysis based on the DA peaks in ILCs vs. IDCs .
Fig. 3
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Survival Rates By Stage
Breast cancer survival rates compare the number of women with breast cancer to the number of women in the overall population to estimate the amount of time women with breast cancer are likely to live after theyre diagnosed.
For example, if the survival rate for a stage of breast cancer during a 5-year period is 90 percent, it means that women diagnosed with that cancer are 90 percent as likely to survive for 5 years following their diagnosis as women who do not have the cancer.
As we mentioned earlier, survival rates are based on information from the SEER database, which the NCI maintains.
SEER does not group breast cancers by stages 0 through 4. Instead, it groups them by the following stages:
- localized: when the cancer has not spread outside of the breast
- regional: when its spread outside the breast to nearby structures or lymph nodes
- distant: when its spread to other parts of the body, such as the liver, lungs, or bones
It should be noted that theres a substantial racial disparity gap in survival rates between white women and Women of Color, especially for late-stage breast cancer diagnoses. The chart below, courtesy of the
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What Is New In The Phenotypic And Molecular Characteristics Of Lobular Carcinoma In Situ
The WHO Classification recognises three variants of LCIS: classic , pleomorphic , and florid . The defining features of both PLCIS and FLCIS have recently been clarified: PLCIS is characterised by cells with enlarged nuclei or similar cytological features to those seen in high-grade ductal carcinoma in situ . FLCIS is characterised by confluent expansive growth, and there must be marked distension of involved acini with little intervening stroma or an expanded acinus or duct approximately 4050 cells in diameter . PLCIS is therefore characterised by its degree of cytological atypia, whereas FLCIS describes an architectural pattern with proliferation that is of classic type . Unlike CLCIS, PLCIS and FLCIS are more likely to have comedo-necrosis and calcifications and hence clinical and radiological presentations . CLCIS is invariably ER and PR positive, and HER2 negative FLCIS exhibits a similar phenotype, though may occasionally be HER2 positive, whilst PLCIS exhibits a more varied phenotype, with less frequent hormone receptor positivity, and an increased likelihood for HER2 overexpression, particularly in the apocrine-type of PLCIS as well as a higher proliferative index . The natural history of PLCIS and FLCIS is as yet not well understood, and as such, relative risk of progression to frank invasive disease remains unclear, and we await long-term outcome data .
Fig. 2Table 1 Somatic mutations in lobular neoplasia, primary ILC , and metastatic ILC
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