Androgen receptor expression identifies patient with favorable outcome in operable triple negative breast cancer

In this study we sought to investigate the prevalence and prognostic value of androgen receptor (AR) status in operable triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients. We collected the clinical data of 360 patients with TNBC, and found a positivity AR expression of 31.4% with a cut-off value of 10%. Tumors expressing the negative CK5/6 (P=0.013) and low Ki-67 (P=0.007) are more likely to have positive AR. In multivariate survival analysis, AR expression is correlated with increased DFS (HR=0.467, 95% CI 0.271-0.805; P=0.006) and OS (HR= 0.488, 95% CI 0.267-0.894, P=0.020) independently. In addition, patients with AR+ tumors are more likely to have favorable outcome in patients with young, pre-menopausal, large tumor size, more node involvement (4+), high stage, high grade, vascular invasion+, P53+, CK5/6-, and higher Ki-67. Our study has indicated that the absence of AR might help to identify patients with relatively higher risk of disease relapse and death, and further clinical studies of anti-androgen agents are warranted to enrich the therapeutic strategy options for AR+ TNBCs.