Invasive Ductal Carcinoma in Males

Invasive Ductal Carcinoma in Males

Introduction

Invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC), occasionally called infiltrating ductal carcinoma, is the most widespread kind of breast cancer. About 80% of all breast cancers are invasive ductal carcinomas.

Invasive means that the cancerous infection has “invaded” or disperse to the surrounding breast tissues. Ductal means that the cancerous infection started in the milk ducts, which are the “pipes” that convey milk from the milk-producing lobules to the nipple. Carcinoma mentions to any cancerous infection that starts in the skin or other tissues that cover interior body components — for example breast tissue. All simultaneously, “invasive ductal carcinoma” mentions to cancerous infection that has broken through the partition of the milk duct and started to invade the tissues of the breast. Over time, invasive ductal carcinoma can disperse to the lymph nodes and probably to other localities of the body.

According to the American Cancer Society, more than 180,000 women in the United States find out they have invasive breast cancerous infection each year. Most of them are identified with invasive ductal carcinoma.

Discussion

Breast cancer is rare in males (1% of all breast cancers). They are important since they have a more aggressive course. Approximately 85% of female breast cancers are infiltrating ductal carcinoma. Since the male breast does not have lobules and acini, lobular carcinoma is seen infrequently. The best recognized lobular carcinoma case in the literature was described in conjunction with Klinefelter's syndrome. About 80-90% of male breast carcinomas are estrogen receptor positive and 30-70% is positive for progesterone receptor. Lobular carcinoma cases are infrequent with hormonal receptors, and cytogenetic investigations have not been adequately performed.

On a broad demographical level, male and female breast cancers are fundamentally similar with the main differences lying in older age of occurrence and lower incidence of the former. However, significant differences have been noted between male and female breast cancers with respect to the expression of a variety of biologic factors, including hormone receptors such as estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, c-erbB-2, estrogen-inducible proteins such as pS2, Cathepsin D, hsp27, proteins related to basement membrane and extracellular matrix degradation such as the urokinase system of plasminogen activation and their inhibitors, and protooncogenes such as bcl-2.

At the morphologic level, male ductal intraepithelial neoplasia (ductal carcinoma in situ), in contrast to similar lesions in females, displays a distinct histologic profile in which the majority of tumors are of the papillary type, with cribriform, micropapillary, and solid types being much less common (Moriya and Silverberg 2004 2978).

However, these studies generally do not have the distribution and relative frequencies of the various histologic subtypes as their main focus, and as such, pathologically important distinctions such as signet ring vs. colloid carcinoma (both subsumed under mucin producing carcinoma), or metaplastic carcinoma vs. infiltrating duct carcinoma not otherwise specified are not emphasized. Over- or under presentation of a particular histologic subtype in male breast cancers may provide valuable insight into the etiopathogenetic differences between male and female breast cancers and may provide an ...