#71 Clinical assessment of her-2/neu Overexpression among african-american and caucasian women

PURPOSE: Her-2/neu overexpression is a marker for poor prognosis and overall survival in women diagnosed with breast cancer. Since the approval of the DAKO HercepTest® for Her-2/neu expression by the FDA in 1998, no systematic investigation has been conducted to assess the proportion of women screened for the marker. We conducted this cross-sectional study to determine the proportion of African-American (AA) and Caucasian (CA) women diagnosed with stage I-IV breast cancer who were screened for Her-2/neu overexpression. METHODS: In this ongoing investigation, study participants were identified from the Tumor Registry of the Henry Ford Health System (HFHS), the second largest health care system in Southeastern Michigan. AA and CA women diagnosed with and treated for primary invasive breast cancer between January 1999 and December 2002 at HFHS were eligible for inclusion in the study. Clinical, pathologic, and demographic data were retrieved from electronic and/or hardcopies of medical records. Univariate statistics and multivariate logistic regression were applied to evaluate the predictors of screening for Her-2/neu. RESULTS: So far, a total of 225 women, 78 AA and 147 CA, have met the eligibility criteria. Of these, 111 women (51.3% AA, 48.3% CA) were screened for Her-2/neu. Women who were screened were younger than those who were not (AA: 55.0 ± 4.4 vs.61.7 ± 5.1, CA: 56.6 ± 3.2 vs. 61.5 ± 3.3). AA women who were screened had a higher node fraction (#positive nodes/ total nodes) (0.29 ± 0.1 vs. 0.13 ± 0.07) than those AA women who were not. For the total study population, race and income were not significant predictors of Her-2/neu screening in the multivariate logistic regression model, but when controlling for these, age (OR: 0.97, 95%CI: 0.95-0.99) and node fraction (OR: 3.95, 95%CI: 1.18-13.23) remain significant predictors. CONCLUSION: Preliminary findings suggest that age is the only limiting factor for being evaluated for Her-2/neu overexpression.