ABSTRACT
The manner and rate with which breast cancers grow and spread is not an autonomous process which only depends on the genetic program of the carcinoma cells. The endocrine tumor-host interaction is of preeminent significance in human breast cancer, not the least because it can be used therapeutically. Since the discovery of Prolactin (PRL) in humans at the beginning of the 1970s and the development of specific assay techniques, a large number of studies dealing with the role of PRL in human breast cancer have arisen. A further clinical approach to demonstrate a possible connection between breast cancer and PRL is the characterization of PRL secretion in breast cancer risk groups and patients with a manifest breast cancer disease. Hyperprolactinemia in breast cancer is related to tumor load, tumor activity, and outcome of systemic therapy. The PRL level, therefore, can be used as a tumor marker and as a prognostic factor in breast cancer with high specificity, but low sensitivity.
