Importance: Given conflicting results regarding the prognosis of erb-b2 receptor tyrosine kinase 2 (ERBB2; formerly HER2 or HER2/neu)-low breast cancer, a large-scale, nationally applicable comparison of ERBB2-low vs ERBB2-negative breast cancer is needed.
Objective: To investigate whether ERBB2-low breast cancer is a clinically distinct subtype in terms of epidemiological characteristics, prognosis, and response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy.
Design/participants/setting: This retrospective cohort study was conducted using the National Cancer Database, including 1 136 016 patients in the US diagnosed with invasive breast cancer from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2019, who had ERBB2-negative disease and had immunohistochemistry results available. ERBB2-low tumors were classified as having an immunohistochemistry score of 1+, or 2+ with a negative in situ hybridization test. Data were analyzed from November 1, 2021, through November 30, 2022.
Exposures: Standard therapy according to routine clinical practice.
Main outcomes and measures: The primary outcomes were overall survival (OS), reported as adjusted hazard ratios (aHRs), and pathologic complete response, reported as adjusted odds ratios (aORs), for ERBB2-negative vs ERBB2-low breast cancer, controlling for age, sex, race and ethnicity, Charlson-Deyo Comorbidity Index score, treatment facility type, tumor grade, tumor histology, hormone receptor status, and cancer stage.
Results: The study identified 1 136 016 patients (mean [SD] age, 62.4 [13.1] years; 99.1% female; 78.6% non-Hispanic White), of whom 392 246 (34.5%) were diagnosed with ERBB2-negative and 743 770 (65.5%) with ERBB2-low breast cancer. The mean (SD) age of the ERBB2-negative group was 62.1 (13.2) years and 62.5 (13.0) years for the ERBB2-low group. Higher estrogen receptor expression was associated with increased rates of ERBB2-low disease (aOR, 1.15 per 10% increase). Compared with non-Hispanic White patients, of whom 66.1% were diagnosed with ERBB2-low breast cancer, fewer non-Hispanic Black (62.8%) and Hispanic (61.0%) patients had ERBB2-low disease, although in non-Hispanic Black patients this was mediated by differences in rates of triple-negative disease and other confounders. A slightly lower rate of pathologic complete response was seen in patients with ERBB2-low disease vs patients with ERBB2-negative disease on multivariable analysis (aOR, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.86-0.92; P < .001). ERBB2-low status was also associated with small improvements in OS for stage III (aHR, 0.92; 95% CI, 0.89-0.96; P < .001) and stage IV (aHR, 0.91; 95% CI, 0.87-0.96; P < .001) triple-negative breast cancer, although this amounted to only a 2.0% (stage III) and 0.4% (stage IV) increase in 5-year OS.
Conclusions and relevance: This large-scale retrospective cohort analysis found minimal prognostic differences between ERBB2-low and ERBB2-negative breast cancer. These findings suggest that, moving forward, outcomes in ERBB2-low breast cancer will be driven by ERBB2-directed antibody-drug conjugates, rather than intrinsic differences in biological characteristics associated with low-level ERBB2 expression. These findings do not support the classification of ERBB2-low breast cancer as a unique disease entity.