Background: Many studies have demonstrated that chemokines and their receptors play important roles in breast cancer. However, few of them focus on the concentration change of chemokines along breast cancer evolvement, especially for primary breast cancer.

Purpose of the study: To investigate the effects of chemokines and their receptors on different stage of primary breast cancer, and to find correlationships between chemokines, between different clinico-pathological characters of patients or between chemokines and different clinico-pathological characters of patients.

Patients and methods: We evaluated and compared the concentration of 10 chemokines and receptors in serum of patients diagnosed as breast benign change, epithelial proliferation (present only or with atypia), in situ carcinoma and invasive carcinoma.

Results: Our oneway ANOVA analysis results showed that in all cases from benign diseases to invasive carcinoma, the concentration of CXCL8, CXCR4 and CXCL12 was significantly different; in benign subgroups (benign change, benign change with proliferation, atypia), the concentration of CCL2 and CCR5 was significantly different; in invasive carcinoma cases, DARC concentration was significantly correlated with the relapse risk of patients.

Conclusions: The correlation analysis indicated the great crosstalk between chemokines and receptors in the course of primary breast cancer; Ki67 expression was associated with CXCL5 and CXCL7 concentration; tumor size was associated with CXCL8 concentration; and the correlation analysis between clinico-pathological characters of patients showed that pathological diagnosis was correlated with tumor size, relapse risk and Ki67 expression; nuclear grades was correlated with LN metastasis, ER status, PR status and the breast cancer genotype; LN metastasis was correlated with relapse risk. Our findings clearly indicated for the first time that the fluctuations of chemokines and receptors contributed to the evolving of primary breast cancer.