Figure 1. Heparanase expression and lymph node involvement in diabetic breast carcinoma patients.

Human breast carcinoma tissue samples (biopsies) were processed for immunohistochemistry with anti-heparanase antibody (733) directed against a synthetic peptide (¹⁵⁸KKFKNSTYRSSSVD¹⁷¹) corresponding to the N-terminus of the 50-kDa subunit of the heparanase enzyme, as described in [28, 57, 58]. Diabetic state, BMI and lymph node status were determined from patient history. Node+: patients with lymph node positive tumors; Node-: patients with lymph node negative tumors. Two-sided Fisher's exact test confirmed that in diabetic patients heparanase-positive tumors are more likely to spread into lymph nodes (*p=0.04). Presence of heparanase in non-diabetic breast tumor samples did not confer statistical significant difference in lymph node involvement.