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I read the Adachi et al. study [1], in which they analyzed the prognosis of invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) and invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) in each subtype and examined the effectiveness of adjuvant chemotherapy in luminal ILC. They concluded that luminal ILC had a poorer prognosis than luminal IDC, contributing to the worse prognosis of ILC than that of IDC in the overall cohort. However, the authors did not describe whether mixed invasive ductal lobular carcinoma (mDLC) cases were excluded or not. mDLC remains a poorly understood subtype of breast cancer composed of coexisting ductal and lobular components.These cases might show different clinical and pathological characteristics other than pure ILC [2,3,4,5]. One study investigated clinicopathologic characteristics and determine whether mDLC is clinically more similar to IDC or ILC. They observed a higher concordance in clinicopathologic characteristics between mDLC and ILC, compared to IDC [6]. Another study examined a well-characterised series of breast carcinoma with a long term follow-up that comprised 140 mDLC, 2170 IDC and 380 pure ILC. They reported that mDLC showed an association with higher grade, positive LN metastasis, VI and development of regional metastasis when compared to pure ILC [7]. In conclusion, more research is necessary to fully understand the biology and clinical importance of tumors containing mDLC, which are less frequent.
References
Adachi Y, Asaga S, Kumamaru H et al (2023) Analysis of prognosis in different subtypes of invasive lobular carcinoma using the japanese national cancer database-breast cancer registry. Breast Cancer Res Treat. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-023-07022-x
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Altundag K (2018) Pure or mixed-type classical invasive lobular carcinoma might show different imaging features. Breast Cancer Res Treat 172(2):507
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Nasrazadani A, Li Y, Fang Y et al (2023) Mixed invasive ductal lobular carcinoma is clinically and pathologically more similar to invasive lobular than ductal carcinoma. Br J Cancer 128:1030–1039
Rakha EA, Gill MS, El-Sayed ME et al (2009) The biological and clinical characteristics of breast carcinoma with mixed ductal and lobular morphology. Breast Cancer Res Treat 114:243–250
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Altundag, K. Is mixed invasive ductal lobular carcinoma distinct from invasive lobular carcinoma?. Breast Cancer Res Treat 202, 409 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-023-07091-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-023-07091-y