Although not associated with an inferior overall survival from primary BC diagnosis (5.1 versus 5.7 years; P = 0.16) or survival after BCBM (2.0 versus 1.4 years, P = 0.9; data not shown), PTEN- BCBM was associated with shorter time to both distant (2.2 versus 3.1 years; P = 0.02; Figure 4) and CNS recurrence (2.5 versus 3.4 years; P = 0.06; Figure 5) even when stratified by TNBC (see later section) in exploratory analyses. This evidence concerns the gene PTEN and breast cancer.