Expression of vascular endothelial growth factor and caspase-3 in mucinous breast carcinoma and infiltrating ductal carcinoma-not otherwise specified, and the correlation with disease-free survival

Mucinous breast carcinoma (MBC) is a rare type of breast cancer, but it has been infrequently studied due to its associated good prognosis. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and caspase-3 have been identified to be prognostic factors of infiltrating ductal carcinoma-not otherwise specified (IDC-NOS), but their expression in MBC has not been reported. In the present study, the expression of caspase-3 and VEGF in MBC and IDC-NOS were assessed by immunohistochemistry. Scoring was conducted based on staining intensity and percentage of positive cells. Based on the scores of caspase-3 and VEGF expression, all patient samples were divided into two groups: Low expression (score of 0-5) or high expression (score of 6-12). In total, 42.59% of MBC patients exhibited a high VEGF score compared with 61.67% of the IDC-NOS group (P<0.05). Furthermore, 57.41% of MBC patients exhibited high caspase-3 expression compared with only 33.33% of IDC-NOS patients (P<0.05). VEGF expression in MBC was associated with age, nodal status and tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage. Cox univariate analysis showed that higher VEGF expression, positive nodal status and higher TNM stage were associated with shorter disease-free survival (DFS). The Kaplan-Meier method showed that higher VEGF expression in MBC was associated with worse DFS times, while Cox multivariate analysis showed that only TNM stage was significantly associated with DFS. VEGF and caspase-3 expression varied in the MBC and IDC-NOS samples, but neither was directly correlated with DFS in the MBC patients.