Correlation of prostate-specific antigen promoter polymorphisms with clinicopathological characteristics in breast cancer.

We have identified two novel polymorphisms in the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) gene promoter regions, the A-AA allele and G-A allele. Furthermore, we have found that A-AA occurred frequently in tumors with higher PSA expressions. We hypothesize that allelic differences may be associated with different phenotypes of breast cancer. To test this hypothesis, we assayed the PSA genotype for 101 breast cancer cases. We also performed immunostaining analysis for estrogen receptor, p53, MIB-1 and c-erbB-2 on all the tumors. At the time of diagnosis, the A-AA allele occurred more frequently in the tumors characterized by small tumor size, good to moderate differentiation, p53-negativity and low tumor proliferation activity. Our results suggest that the presence of the A-AA allele at the PSA promoter region is associated with less aggressive forms of breast cancer and could be looked on as a favorable prognostic factor.