IL-1RN gene polymorphisms are associated with breast cancer risk in a Chinese Han population.

Abstract

The interleukins (ILs) are a large family of endogenous cytokines that are crucial in the regulation of inflammation and immunological responses. The IL-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1RN) has been found to be associated with risk breast cancer (BC) in Korean and Indian women. However, little information is found about the polymorphisms of IL-1RN in Chinese Han BC patients. We investigated the association between single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in IL-1RN and BC risk in a case-control study that included 530BC cases and 628 healthy controls. Six tag SNPs in IL-1RN were selected and genotyped using the Sequenom MassARRAY platform (Sequenom, San Diego, CA, USA). Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated using unconditional logistic regression after adjusting for age and sex. In the allele model, we found that the frequency of the 'T' allele of rs928940 was significantly lower in BC cases than in controls (OR=0.776, 95% CI=0.611-0.985, p=0.037). In the genetic model analysis, five susceptibility SNPs were found to be associated with BC risk: the minor allele 'G' of rs315919, rs3181052 and rs452204 were associated with a decreased risk of BC under dominant model (p<0.05), whereas the minor alleles 'T' and 'C' of rs928940 and rs4252019 were associated with a decreased risk of BC under both the codominant and dominant models (p<0.05), which suggested these SNPs may play a protective role against BC risk. The haplotype 'TAGC' constructed by rs928940, rs3181052, rs452204 and rs4252019 was associated with a decreased risk of BC (OR=0.33; 95% CI=0.12-0.94; p=0.038). The data obtained in the present study shed new light on the association between genetic polymorphisms of IL-1RN and BC susceptibility in the Chinese Han population.