Is anyone ER+ PG -?

I am, and 12 + years out. Hang in there, they will find the right treatments for you.

I would imagine chemo would be good treatment given low er and grade 3. Good luck. There are many many of us that are cancer free years after treatment.

HeartShapedBox, the information you provided about the role and impact of PR is incorrect.

ER+/PR- cancers tend to be more aggressive than ER+/PR+ cancers. PR- cancers, vs. PR+ cancers, are more likely to be larger, grade 3, node positive, HER2+ and have high Ki-67. Of course some PR- cancer are none of these things, but overall more PR- breast cancers meet the criteria for chemo than PR+ cancers.

https://bmccancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12885-015-1121-4

The current theory is that the presence of progesterone keeps the estrogen under control, thereby leading to a better prognosis for ER+/PR+ cancer versus ER+/PR- cancer.

https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2015/07/08/solving-a-breast-cancer-mystery-why-do-double-positive-women-do-better/

Breast cancer researchers really didn't spend much time looking at PR- until recently. This is likely why there are currently no treatments specifically for PR- patients. I have seen some recent articles on this topic so I'm sure these will come in time.

Currently, endocrine therapy is prescribed to any patient who is ER+, regardless of PR status. Some studies have suggested that Tamoxifen is less effective than the AIs for PR- cancers, but other studies have not found this to be the case. Additionally, while some studies suggest that overall endocrine therapy may not be as effective on ER+/PR- patients than on ER+/PR+ patients, here again other studies show similar metastatic risk reductionbenefit to patients regardless of PR status.

I will add some of these studies when I dig them out.

Eigna, you are worried and overwhelmed, and that's not unusual after a new breast cancer diagnosis, as you wait for surgery. You don't know what the surgery will find and what your final diagnosis will be, you don't know what treatments you will need, and the surgery itself is scary. I'm not going to tell you to not be worried, because it wouldn't be normal to not be worried.

What I will tell you is to not let this worry affect how you think about your prognosis and the future. From your signature line, at this point it appears that your preliminary diagnosis is a small, early stage cancer. The most curative treatment for this type of diagnosis is simply the surgery itself. Usually other treatments - radiation, chemo, endocrine therapy, as appropriate - are given, but those are the 'just in case' treatments, just in case some rogue cells remain in the breast or have moved beyond the breast. And the role of these treatments is to track down those rogue cells and kill them off.

With a low ER no PR diagnosis, and with the cells being grade 3, it's quite possible that you will have an Oncotype score that leads to a recommendation of chemo. And the studies I provided have shown that endocrine therapy is effective even when the ER% is low and there is no PR. So at least chemo and possibly endocrine therapy will be available to you. Although your pathology is less favorable than a high ER high PR cancer, these treatments will make up the difference.

The waiting is horrible. The unknowns are scary. But don't get ahead of yourself. Don't assume a bad prognosis. And recurrence? Why are you thinking about recurrence when you haven't yet had any treatment? The goal of treatment is to remove and kill off all the cancer cells so that you don't have a recurrence.

It's okay to be scared, angry and frustrated. But being scared, angry and frustrated has nothing to do with your prognosis. Hopefully your final diagnosis remains a small early stage cancer, and a year from now you are looking at this in the rear view mirror and you never have to deal with it again.

i think it's important to differenciate the prognosis outcome of studies that admitedly correlate PR negative status to "hormone negative" status, when talking about someone who IS estrogen positive (& still doesn't know HER2 status). I was responding to "is there not good treatment for me" in that vein- being ER positive they WILL want to still do hormonal therapy for that, no? And HER2 status is a big target as well, and further complicates these study results.

I'm sorry if my simplified response was misleading or didn't address the nature of the original post (that I wasn't understanding properly). I was only trying to emphasize that this status DOESN'T mean "there is no good treatment" and to not give up hope!- so sorry if it came off misinformed.

My 77 year old mother was just dx with a weak estrogen positive (25%), PR negative, Her2 negative. They have told her chemo would be the best line of defense if she was younger, but since she is older we have to look at the risks vs benefits. Having gone thru this myself, I am heartbroken that she has to go thru this. She was my rock during my treatments. We will be meeting with medical oncologist this week to discuss plan.