Candidate gene approach evaluates association between innate immunity genes and breast cancer risk in Korean women

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate the role of common variation in innate immunity-related genes as susceptibility factors to breast cancer risk in Korean women. Total 1536 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 203 genes were analyzed by Illumina GoldenGate assay in 209 cases and the same numbers of controls. Both SNP and gene-based tests were used to evaluate the association with breast cancer risk. The robustness of results was further evaluated with permutation method, false discovery rate and haplotype analyses. Both SNP and gene-based analyses showed promising associations with breast cancer risk for 17 genes: OR10J3, FCER1A, NCF4, CNTNAP1, CTNNB1, KLKB1, ITGB2, ALOX12B, KLK2, IRAK3, KLK4, STAT6, NCF2, CCL1, C1QR1, MBP and NOS1. The most significant association with breast cancer risk was observed for the OR10J3 SNP (rs2494251, P-value = 1.2 x 10(-4)) and FCER1A SNP (rs7548864, P-value = 7.7 x 10(-4)). Gene-based permutation and false discovery rate P-values for OR10J3 SNP (rs2494251) with breast cancer risk were also significant (P = 4 x 10(-5) and 0.008, respectively). Haplotype analyses supported these findings that OR10J3 and FCER1A were most significantly associated with risk for breast cancer (P = 2 x 10(-4) and 0.004, respectively). This study suggests that common genetic variants in the OR10J3 and FCER1A be strongly associated with breast cancer risk among Korean women.