Figure 4.

Extracellular levels of proteases in vivo in breast cancers and healthy normal breast tissue with different densities. 51 women were investigated using microdialysis; 12 breast cancer patients underwent microdialysis before surgery. One catheter was inserted into the breast cancer (black bars) and another into adjacent normal breast tissue (white bars). 39 postmenopausal healthy volunteer women, attending the regular mammography-screening program and were categorized as either having dense or non-dense breasts underwent microdialysis of their left breast. Women with dense breasts (n = 20) are depicted in red and women categorized as non-dense (n = 19) are depicted in yellow. Data represent protein abundance in linear values (2^NPX as described in the Section “Materials and Methods”). Graphed data are presented as median with 95% CI (*P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001).