BRCAness Combined With a Family History of Cancer Is Associated With a Poor Prognosis for Breast Cancer Patients With a High Risk of BRCA Mutations

We assessed BRCAness as a characteristic of BRCA-mutated breast cancer. We investigated 124 breast cancer patients with a high risk of BRCA mutations, who had early-onset or triple-negative breast cancer. No correlation was found between BRCAness and family history. However, those with a BRCAness tumor and a positive family history had a significantly worse prognosis, which could be of use in predicting the prognosis. Background: The inexpensive prediction of the characteristics of BRCA-mutated breast cancer as “BRCAness” using the somatic cells of patients with breast cancer could be useful for developing a therapeutic strategy. Our objective was to correlate BRCAness with the clinicopathologic features, including a family history (FH) of cancer, in breast cancer patients with a high risk of BRCA mutations. Patients and Methods: The present study included 124 patients, including 55 with early-onset and 77 with triple-negative breast cancer, who had undergone resection at Kyushu University Hospital from 2005 to 2014. Early-onset breast cancer is defined as an onset in patients aged ≤ 40 years. BRCAness was performed using multiple ligation-dependent probe amplification. The patients’ FH of cancer was surveyed from first- to third-degree relatives. Results: Of the 124 patients, the multiple ligation-dependent probe amplification assay results indicated that 59 tumors (47.6%) had BRCAness and 27 patients (21.8%) had a positive FH for cancer. The patients with BRCAness experienced significantly shorter recurrence-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) compared with those without. Patients with FH had shorter RFS and OS compared to those without BRCAness. The patients were divided into those with and without BRCAness and those with and without a positive FH. The BRCAness with FH subgroup experienced significantly shorter RFS and OS. Multivariate analysis revealed that BRCAness and a positive FH were independent negative prognostic factors. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that BRCAness tumors with a positive FH of cancer were associated with a poor prognosis in the BRCA-mutation high-risk group. We propose that BRCAness and a positive FH will serve to predict patients’ prognosis.