Neuroendocrine differentiation in breast carcinoma: clinicopathological features and outcome

AimsPrimary neuroendocrine (NE) breast carcinoma (BC) is an entity with a wide range of prevalence and poorly defined clinical behaviour. We evaluated the prevalence, clinicopathological features and clinical outcome of NEBC. Methods and resultsImmunohistochemical staining for synaptophysin and chromogranin A was performed on whole sections from 1232 consecutive cases of invasive BC. We divided NEBC into focal (10-49% positive cells) and diffuse (50% positive cells) and compared the outcome of patients with NEBC with strictly matched non-NEBC. A total of 128 BC showed NE differentiation (10.4%): 84 diffuse (6.8%) and 44 focal (3.6%). NE differentiation showed a significant association with T4 stage (P=0.001), solid-papillary and mucinous histotype (P<0.0001), G2 grading (P=0.002), positive oestrogen receptor (ER) (P=0.003) and progesterone receptor (PR) (P=0.002). Almost 90% of NEBC were ER+/HER2(-) and more than half ER+/HER2(-)/Ki6714%. Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed that patients with NEBC showed worse disease-free survival (DFS) (P=0.04) compared to matched non-NEBC. We did not find significant differences regarding clinicopathological features, DFS and CSS between diffuse and focal neuroendocrine BC. ConclusionsThis study demonstrates that NEBC represents 7-10% of invasive BC and that NE differentiation does not affect the prognosis of BC in terms of CSS.