The relationship between serum Cathepsin D And Cathepsin K levels, and prognostic factors in women with primary breast cancer

Breast cancer is a clinically and biologically very heterogenous disease and the existing prognostic markers are not enough. Therefore, in breast cancer prognostic markers research continues. Cathepsins are thought to be related with invasion, metastasis, cell proliferation and angiogenesis in cancer. They are promising prognostic factors the last thirty years.In our study, we evaluated serum cathepsin D (CD) and cathepsin K (CK) levels in patients with primary breast cancer (n=25).Serum CD levels of the patient group were significantly higher than the control group ( the median 5270 pg/ml in the patient group, the median 3994 pg/ml in the control group, p=0.000). However, in the sub-groups of histological grade 2 and grade 3; of axillary lymph node 0, 1-3 and ? 4, and of tumor size ? 2 cm and 2-5cm, we could not detect a significant difference between the CD levels (p values, respectively, 0,555, 0,264 and 0,806).No significant difference was found between serum levels of CK in the patient group and the control group (the patient group the median value 23.9pmol/L, control group median value 19.3pmol/L, p = 0,693). There were no significant differences between serum CK levels of sub-groups of patients.Increased serum levels of CD in patient group is important. Detecting no difference between serum CD levels of patient sub-groups probably may be due to small number of patients.KK is an enzyme that is more associated with bone metastasis in cancer. No one has metastasis in our patient group. So our results seem to be compatible with scientific data.In conclusion, although our data are significant, we believe that the study should be improved by increasing the number of patients.