Abstract P5-01-07: Fibroadenomatoid changes are more prevalent in middle-aged women and have a positive association with invasive breast cancer
Authors: Chen Y , Bekhash A , Kovatich AJ , Hooke JA , Kvecher L , Mitchell EP , Rui H , Mural RJ , Shriver CD , Hu H 
Published: August 2014

Background: The role of benign breast diseases (BBDs) in the development of invasive breast cancers (IBCs) has been studied for many years. Some BBDs have been studied comprehensively (e.g., fibrocystic changes (FCC)) while less is known about other BBDs (e.g., fiboadenomatoid changes (FAC)). FAC has been considered by some researchers as a precursor of fibroadenoma (FA). Conclusions from different studies vary, partially due to different interpretation methods and diagnostic criteria when multiple hospitals and pathologists were involved. In this study, we used subjects in the Clinical Breast Care Project (CBCP) from a military medical center where pathology slides were reviewed by a single breast pathologist to study FAC, FA, and FCC in comparison to the published literature.

Methods: Subjects were enrolled in the study following IRB-approved, HIPAA-compliant protocols. All the clinicopathologic data are available from the CBCP data warehouse (DW4TR). In the CBCP, FCC is composed of 4 components: stromal fibrosis, cysts, apocrine metaplasia, and sclerosing adenosis. Two modeling studies were performed. i) For the BBDs and IBC association study, two groups of subjects were identified: 1136 subjects diagnosed with “Benign” or “Atypical” diseases, and 619 cases diagnosed with IBCs. A logistic regression model was developed for the prediction of IBCs by the 3 BBDs and 2 well-established risk factors (RF): age (younger, &lt;=40; middle-aged, 41–60; older, &gt;60) and race (Caucasian, African American, Asian, and other). ii) For the RF association study with the BBDs, 6 additional RFs reported to be associated with these BBDs were identified from the literature: current use of oral contraceptives, number of live births, education, body mass index, hormonal replacement therapy, and IBC family history. These 8 RFs were used to develop a logistic regression model for each of the BBDs. The analyses were performed in SAS.

Results: In the first study, age and race were confirmed as RFs for IBCs. FAC was positively associated with IBC (OR = 3.04, 95%CI=2.06 to 4.50). FA was negatively associated with IBC, and the level of the association was stronger in women without FCC (OR = 0.15, 95%CI=0.08 to 0.28), compared to women with FCC (OR = 0.40, 95%CI=0.24 to 0.65). FCC was not significantly associated with IBC. Results from the second study indicated that, age was significantly associated with FAC (p = 0.015), specifically the middle-aged women were more likely to have FAC compared to younger women (OR = 2.03, 95%CI=1.23 to 3.34), while the older women were at a non-significantly increased risk. Trends of association with FAC were also noted for the number of live birth (p = 0.095), ethnicity (p = 0.096), and current oral contraceptive pill use (p = 0.077). The FCC model results were in general consistent with the literature, and we also confirmed that age was negatively associated with the diagnosis of FA.

Discussion: Our study was consistent with FCC findings in the literature. We observed that FAC was positively associated with IBC, whereas FA was negatively associated. Also, FAC occurred more often in middle-aged women while FAs occurrence was higher in younger women. Our results suggest that FAC and FA may be two different diseases.

Citation Information: Cancer Res 2012;72(24 Suppl):Abstract nr P5-01-07.