Microcalcifications (MCs) are important disease markers for breast cancer. Many studies were conducted on their characterization in female breast cancer (FBC), but no information is available on their composition in male breast cancer (MBC). Raman spectroscopy (RS) is a molecular spectroscopy technique that can explore the biochemical composition of MCs rapidly and without requiring any staining protocol. We here compared, by Raman spectroscopy, the MCs identified on breast cancer pieces from male and female patients. In this study, we used Raman spectroscopy to analyse 41 microcalcifications from 5 invasive MBC patients and 149 MCs from 14 invasive FBC patients. Our findings show that hydroxyapatite is the most abundant type of calcium both in MBC and FBC. However, some differences in the amount and distribution of calcium minerals are present between the two groups. Besides, we observed that MCs in MBC have a higher amount of organic material (collagen) than FBC. This study provides the first overview of the composition of microcalcifications present in MBC and suggests that they have several specific features. Our result support the need for studies specifically designed to the understanding of MBC.

中文翻译：

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微钙化的拉曼光谱显示男女乳腺癌之间的特殊差异

微钙化（MCs）是乳腺癌的重要疾病标志。关于女性乳腺癌（FBC）的特征进行了许多研究，但没有关于男性乳腺癌（MBC）的成分的信息。拉曼光谱（RS）是一种分子光谱技术，可以快速探索MC的生化成分，而无需任何染色方案。我们在这里通过拉曼光谱法比较了在男性和女性患者的乳腺癌碎片上鉴定出的MC。在这项研究中，我们使用拉曼光谱分析了5例浸润性MBC患者的41个微钙化和14例浸润性FBC患者的149个MC。我们的发现表明，羟基磷灰石是MBC和FBC中钙含量最高的类型。然而，两组之间钙矿物质的含量和分布存在一些差异。此外，我们观察到MBC中的MC比FBC含有更多的有机物质（胶原蛋白）。这项研究首次概述了MBC中存在的微钙化的组成，并暗示它们具有几个特定的​​特征。我们的结果支持需要进行专门研究以了解MBC的研究。