Blood ABO groups and risk of breast cancer

Abstract

To the editor ABO blood group has been previously found to be associated with the risk of gastrointestinal malignancies including gastric cancer and pancreas cancer [1, 2]. However, there is no data about the association of breast cancer with ABO blood groups. Thus, we aimed to investigate the relationship between ABO blood group and breast cancer risk by comparing the blood groups of breast cancer patients with healthy female donors in a cross-sectional model. Patients with breast cancer (n = 565) who were admitted to our clinic between 2004 and 2009 were retrospectively evaluated. The control group comprised healthy female blood-bank donors (n = 1853). The frequency of distributions of ABO blood groups and Rh types was nearly identical among the patients and the controls (Table 1). When the clinical and pathological characteristics of the patients with different blood groups were compared, again no significant difference was observed considering age at the time of diagnosis, menopausal state, disease stage, hormone receptor and HER2 expression, tumor size, lymph node involvement, lymphovascular/perineural invasion and tumor grade. In conclusion, there seems to be no association between ABO blood type and the risk of breast cancer or any specific clinical or pathological feature of breast cancer in our patient population.