The prognostic significance of tumor angiogenesis in Taiwanese patients with invasive ductal breast carcinomas

Angiogenesis plays an important role in tumor growth and metastasis. We performed an immunohistochemical study by anti-CD31 antibody to investigate the prognostic significance of microvessel count (MVC) in 163 Taiwanese patients with primary invasive ductal breast carcinomas. Univariate analysis revealed that MVC per 200× field correlated significantly with disease-free (P<0.001) and overall survival (P<0.0008). In 74 patients with node-negative tumors, MVC also significantly correlated with disease-free (P<0.03) and overall survival (P<0.007). Multivariate Cox regression analysis demonstrated that MVC is an independent factor in predicting disease-free (P<0.02) and overall survival (P<0.02). Our study confirms that tumor angiogenesis as measured by MVC is a reliable independent prognostic factor of breast cancer.