Sure. The "R" in "ER" and "PR" stands for Receptor (a type of protein.) "E" and "P" are for certain hormones, so "ER" and "PR" would stand for the receptors for these hormones. This is measured on a scale that goes up to 8, meaning, this type of cancer would be expected to give a good response to a treatment path that would include dealing with these two hormones. "HER2" is another type of receptor that is checked for. All of these tests are done so that oncology can choose the optimum treatment path for that specific patient, based amongst other things on what the results are for ER, PR, and HER2.
ER is oestrogen receptor because they use the American spelling. ER +8 means your cancer is highly susceptible to oestrogen, which is good news as suppressing oestrogen us very effective for this type of cancer.
PE is progesterone receptor, which your cancer is also susceptible to, but unfortunately blocking progesterone doesn’t seem to have any effect - research is ongoing to see if a treatment could target the progesterone receptors like the oestrogen receptors, but at they moment they test for it in case it’s useful at some point in the future.
HER2 relates to other common growth factors in breast cancer - a high HER often denotes a relatively fast growing cancer, but that also means it is strongly affected by certain chemotherapy drugs. So yours is not particularly fast growing but has some susceptibility to chemo drugs.
None of this is really good or bad but does point to the best treatment plan for your cancer, and FWIW is similar to my own
I have just searched for ER8 PR7 HER-2 as I didn't know what it meant. After two weeks of seeing it in print on my letter from the hospital I thought I ought to find out.
Your post was very helpful thank you. How are you now?
