Stromal Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes (sTILs) Were Associated with a Higher Grade and a Lower Stage of Indonesian Triple Negative Breast Cancers.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to investigate the association of sTILs with clinicopathological parameters and overall survival (OS) in patients with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC).

METHODS

One hundred and twenty-five paraffin embedded tissue of patients with TNBC, collected from Dr. Sardjito General Hospital Yogyakarta, Indonesia, between 2008-2017, were used in this study. Stromal TILs were examined from hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-stained samples, and classified as either low or high score using 20% cut-off. Analysis of the association of sTILs with clinicopathological parameters, relative risk (RR) and OS used 95% confidence interval (CI) with significance set as p<0.05.

RESULTS

The higher proportion of TNBC patients in this study were ≥40 years old (83.3%), high tumor grade (68%), tumor stage >IIIa (56%), alive (50.4%), and with low sTILs (54.4%). The results showed significant association between sTILs and a higher grade or a lower stage of tumor (B = 0.259, 95%CI = 0.090-0.468, p = 0.004 and B = -0.255, 95%CI = -0.433 - -0.080, p = 0.005, respectively ). Meanwhile sTILs were not associated with age at diagnosis (B = 0.027, 95%CI = -0.193 - 0.264  p = 0.758 nor 3-year OS of patients (HR = 0.342, 95%CI = 0.41 - 1.43  p = 0.402).

CONCLUSION

The results indicate that sTILs may serve as an additional pathological parameter for TNBC.