Abstract
Single Hormone Receptor–Positive Breast Cancer—Signal or Noise?
Highlights
Li and colleagues[1] address the 4 different combinations of estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR) and breast cancer survival using a large population-based cancer registry, the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database
The question is whether the group of ER-negative/PR-positive cancers is a legitimate subgroup or is an artifact resulting from misclassification
Perhaps the best evidence that it is a meaningful category comes from the survival difference reported by Li and colleagues1: 68.5% for women with the ER-negative/PR-positive cancer vs 76.5% for women with the ER-positive/PR-positive cancer
Summary
Some have argued that the ER-negative/PR-positive subtype is biologically implausible given the coexpression and pathways of the ER and PR in breast cancer,[2] and other studies have been unable to reproduce the ER-negative/PR-positive subtype using alternative techniques.[3] The question is whether the group of ER-negative/PR-positive cancers is a legitimate subgroup or is an artifact resulting from misclassification. Perhaps the best evidence that it is a meaningful category comes from the survival difference reported by Li and colleagues1: 68.5% for women with the ER-negative/PR-positive cancer vs 76.5% for women with the ER-positive/PR-positive cancer (hazard ratio, 1.61; 95% CI, 1.55-1.67).
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