T-cadherin association with clinicopathological features and prognosis in axillary lymph node-positive breast cancer

The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation of T-cadherin expression with clinicopathological features and prognosis in patients with axillary lymph node-positive breast cancer. Based on the immunohistochemistry results, all 142 patients with operable axillary lymph node-positive breast cancer were divided into the T-cadherin-negative and T-cadherin-positive groups. Clinical data including the association of T-cadherin expression with clinicopathological features and prognosis were analyzed using the Chi square test and Fisher’s exact test using SPSS 13.0 software. The impact of T-cadherin expression on the 5-year disease-free survival (DFS) and the 5-year overall survival (OS) of these patients was measured using the log-rank test. DFS and OS were analyzed using both Kaplan–Meier function and Cox regression analyses. Compared with the T-cadherin-positive group (55.07, 28.99, and 13.4 %, respectively; P = 0.030, P = 0.0132, and P = 0.009), tumor size >2 cm, lymph-vascular invasion, and pathological stage III disease were seen more frequently in the T-cadherin-negative group (72.60, 49.32, and 31.51 %, respectively). Both 5-year DFS and 5-year OS were poorer in the T-cadherin-negative group than in the T-cadherin-positive group (log-rank test = 9.295, P = 0.002; log-rank test = 5.718, P = 0.017). On multivariate analysis, T-cadherin-negative expression remained an independent prognostic factor for DFS (P = 0.002) but not for OS (P = 0.067). Our results suggested that negative T-cadherin expression has a worse prognosis in patients with axillary lymph node-positive breast cancer.