Background: Immune functions and their relation to prognosis in breast cancer patients have become areas of great interest in recent years. Correlations between survival outcomes and peripheral blood flow cytometry parameters are therefore of interest. Here we focused on patients with non-metastatic breast cancer (BC).
Materials and methods: A total of 29 patients with pathological confirmed breast carcinoma and flow cytometry data were assessed for overall survival (OS) and progression free survival (PFS).
Results: The median age of the patients was 54 years (range, 29-83). Multivariate analysis revealed that OS was significantly associated with absolute cytotoxic T cell count (95%CI, coef 2.26, p=0.035), tumor size (95%CI, coef -14.5, p 0.004), chemotherapy (95%CI, coef 12.9, p 0.0001), MFI of CD4 (95%CI, coef -5.1, P 0.04), MFI of HLA DR (95%CI, coef -5.9, p 0.008) and tumor grade (95%CI, coef -13, P 0.049) with R-Sq(adj)=67%. Similar findings were obtained for PFS.
Conclusions: OS and PFS were significantly associated with tumor grade, tumor size, chemotherapy, MFI of CD4, HLA DR and absolute cytotoxic T cell count. The study revealed that MFI of basic CD markers and absolute cytotoxic T cell number may be a prognostic factors in women with non-metastatic BC.