Table 2a:
Correlation between the number of negative cytokeratins (CKs) and the total number of CKs requested – first half of the table - and the number of positive CKs – second half of the table (p<0.001).
| Number of cases distributed by number of negative CK immunostains |
Total | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0~ | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | ||
| Total no. of CK immunostains | |||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||
| 1 | 6* | 0 | 6 | ||||||||
| 2 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 10 | |||||||
| 3 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 12 | ||||||
| 4 | 12 | 13 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 36 | |||||
| 5 | 7 | 5 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 28 | ||||
| 6 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 18 | |||
| 7 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 9 | ||
| 8 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 11 | |
| 9** | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 10 |
|
| |||||||||||
| No. of positive CK immunostains | |||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 22 |
| 1 | 6* | 4 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 19 | |
| 2 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 22 | ||
| 3 | 6 | 13 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 29 | |||
| 4 | 12 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 21 | ||||
| 5 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 12 | |||||
| 6 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 10 | ||||||
| 7 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | |||||||
| 8 | 1 | 0 | 1 | ||||||||
|
| |||||||||||
| Total | 43 | 29 | 17 | 17 | 9 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 140 |
column lists all cases which were positive with all CKs testes (none were negative)
6 cases were stained with only 1 CK and they were all positive.
9 CK antibodies were used in 10 cases: 3 were negative for all of the 9 CKs, 1 was negative for 7 CKs and positive for 2 CKs, 1 case was positive for 5 CKs and negative for 4, whereas 3 cases were positive for 3 CKs and negative for the remaining 6 CKs.
Distribution of the number of negative CKs in the 22 cases that did not show any positivity for any of the tested CKs is highlighted in bold. The table shows that all CK negative MBC were tested for at least 3 CKs, with 18 of them being stained with more than 5 CKs.