Population Differences in Breast Cancer: Survey in Indigenous African Women Reveals Over-Representation of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer

Purpose Compared with white women, black women experience a disproportionate burden of aggressive breast cancer for reasons that remain unknown and understudied. In the first study of its kind, we determined the distribution of molecular subtypes of invasive breast tumors in indigenous black women in West Africa. Patients and Methods The study comprised 507 patients diagnosed with breast cancer between 1996 and 2007 at six geographic regions in Nigeria and Senegal. Formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded sections were constructed into tissue microarrays and immunostained with 15 antibodies. Five molecular subtypes were determined, and hierarchical cluster analysis was conducted to explore subgroups for unclassified cases. Results The mean (± standard deviation) age of 378 patients in the first cohort was 44.8 ± 11.8 years, with the majority of women presenting with large (4.4 ± 2.0 cm) high-grade tumors (83%) in advanced stages (72% node positive). The proportions of estrogen receptor (ER) –positive, progest...