Ezrin expression in primary breast cancer, metastatic lymph nodes and normal breast tissue

Aim: To investigate the ezrin expression in normal breast tissue, primary breast cancer and lymphnode metastases and study the correlation between ezrin expression in breast cancer tissue, tumor invasion and metastasis. Methods: Immunohistochemistry was used to detect the ezrin expression in normal breast tissue, breast cancer tissue and metastatic lymph nodes using two commercially available tissue arrays BR2082 and BR1005. The tissue array BR1005 consists of 50 samples of primary breast cancer and 50 samples of lymph node metastases while the tissue array BR2082 includes 32 metastatic lymph node samples, 94 invasive breast cancer samples, 26 preinvasive breast tumors, 40 benign breast tumors and 16 normal breast tissue samples. Results: We found a statistically significant difference between the ezrin expression in benign breast tumors and breast cancer samples (chi square test: p<0.0001). There was no significant difference between the expression of ezrin in metastatic lymph nodes and primary breast cancer (p=0.4899). Conclusion: Ezrin expression is obviosly higher in malign than in benign breast tumors correlating with the hypothesis of ezrin playing an important role in the tumor invasion process. We could not show a correlation between the expression of ezrin and the process of metastasis.