Expression of Fibroblast Growth Factor 5 (FGF5) and Its Influence on Survival of Breast Cancer Patients

BACKGROUND The clinical outcome of patients with breast cancer (BC) remains poor. MATERIAL AND METHODS We analyzed BC microarray studies GSE37751, GSE7390, and GSE21653 to investigate the expression of FGF5 gene between BC patients and their normal counterparts and the relationship between FGF5 expression and age, tumor size, histopathological grading, estrogen receptors, clinical risk group according to St Gallen criteria, clinical risk group according to NPI criteria, clinical risk group according to Veridex signature, distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS), time to distant metastasis (TDM), disease-free survival (DFS), and overall survival (OS) of BC patients. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was used to investigate the exact mechanisms. RESULTS FGF5 expression was significantly upregulated in BC patients relative to that in normal controls (P