Abstract Background Hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative (HR + /HER2-) breast cancer generally has a favorable prognosis; however, early postoperative recurrence markedly reduces survival. Accurate prediction of early recurrence is crucial for personalizing treatment. This case–control study compared MammaPrint (MP) and BluePrint (BP) results between early recurrence patients and matched controls. Methods Patients were selected from our previous study, the WJOG15721B cohort (n = 2732). Those with recurrence within three years after surgery were randomly extracted, and controls matched for institution, clinical stage, and number of pathological lymph node metastases were included (n = 124). Tumor samples underwent MP and BP assays to classify recurrence risk and molecular subtypes. Results Of 115 submitted tumor samples, 85 were analyzed successfully (43 early recurrence, 42 no recurrence). High-risk MP classification was significantly more frequent in early recurrence patients (79.1% vs. 40.5%, p < 0.001), and Luminal B BP subtype was more common in early recurrence patients (79.1% vs. 38.1%, p < 0.001). High MP risk was associated with high Ki-67 levels and higher nuclear grade. Integrating clinical and genomic risk enhanced prognostic precision: patients with both clinical and genomic high risk had the highest recurrence rate (100%), those with low clinical and genomic risk had the lowest (28.1%), and patients with low clinical but high genomic risk showed an intermediate recurrence rate (57.5%). Conclusions Compared with patients without recurrence, those with early recurrence showed a significantly higher prevalence of high-risk MP results and Luminal B BP subtype. High-risk MP/Luminal B BP subtype suggested an association with early recurrence in patients with HR + /HER2- early breast cancer.
Watanuki et al. (Thu,) studied this question.