Al-Sinawi, Shadya Said (2011) Pathogenesis of breast cancer in Omani patients. (MSc(R) thesis), Kingston University, .

Abstract

There are several well established risk factors for breast cancer but little is known with regards to its aetiology. In as much as 50% of the cases, no identifiable risk or prognostic factor can be identified. A number of recent studies implicated a role for Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in the pathogenesis of some cases of breast cancer. However, the association is controversial. Epstein Barr virus genome has been detected in 0 to 60% of breast carcinoma. The wide variation has been attributed to differing specificity and sensitivity of the detection methods and also due to different geographic areas. The aim of this study was to elucidate the aetiological role of EBV and four prognostic markers in Omani breast cancer patients. Using a modified non-isotopic in situ hybridization method and immunohistochemistry 123 samples (120 female and 3 male) of breast cancer from Omani patients were examined to determine if EBV was aetiologically associated with breast cancer cases from Oman and if there was correlation with established prognostic factors such as (ethnicity, gender, age, histological diagnosis, hormone receptors status and HER-2 protein expression). In addition four prognostic markers (BRCA1, BRCA2, Maspin and Survivin) were used for first time to elucidate their cellular and aetiological role in Omani breast cancer cases. For detecting maspin and survivin number of patients were selected randomly due amount of antibody used in the study. Maspin =68 patients and survivin= 80 patients. We did not find any evidence for the presence of EBV in malignant cells of Omani breast cancer patients. The virus was however detected in occasional non-malignant lymphocytes (5% of the cases) and there was no correlation between the prognostic factors and association of EBV in our cases. This study shed some light on some new prognostic markers which may be helpful for predicting aggressive phenotype of breast cancer in Oman.

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