Immunohistochemical demonstration of estrogen, progesterone, CEA and ferritin in breast cancer and their clinical value for the prediction of early postoperative recurrence.

The aim of this paper is to determine whether the incidence of estrogen-, progesterone-, CEA-, and ferritin- positive staining of primary tumors, by using the PAP method, is related to the prognosis of breast cancer status. A significantly higher incidence (71 per cent) of CEA-positive tumors was observed in patients who had a recurrence of breast cancer within 2 years after radical operation. Patients, whose tumors were positive in estrogen or negative in CEA, showed a relatively good prognosis, even after a recurrence of the disease. Distant metastases were seen in most of the patients positive in CEA (78 per cent). Before the recurrence of breast cancer, those patients positive in progesterone had a good prognosis. After the recurrence, however, there was no relationship between the prognosis of recurrent disease and the progesterone-staining of primary tumors. Our data suggest that the immunohistological staining of estrogen, progesterone and CEA might offer the effective prognostic indices in breast cancer patients.