Abstract
It has been proposed that the excess of familiar risk associated with breast cancer could be explained by the cumulative effect of multiple weakly predisposing alleles. The transcriptional repressor FBI1, also known as Pokemon, has recently been identified as a critical factor in oncogenesis. This protein is encoded by the ZBTB7 gene. Here we aimed to determine whether polymorphisms in ZBTB7 are associated with breast cancer risk in a sample of cases and controls collected in hospitals from North and Central Spanish patients. We genotyped 15 SNPs in ZBTB7, including the flanking regions, with an average coverage of 1 SNP/2.4 Kb, in 360 sporadic breast cancer cases and 402 controls. Comparison of allele, genotype and haplotype frequencies between cases and controls did not reveal associations using Pearson's chi-square test and a permutation procedure to correct for multiple test. In this, the first study of the ZBTB7 gene in relation to, sporadic breast cancer, we found no evidence of an association.
Highlights
It has been suggested that breast cancer, together with prostate and colorectal, are the cancers with the highest heritable components
The excess of familial risk associated with sporadic breast cancer may be better explained by the effect of multiple weakly predisposing alleles [3,4]
There is much interest in the search for low penetrance gene/variants for breast cancer, which could exist with relatively high prevalence in the general population
Summary
It has been suggested that breast cancer, together with prostate and colorectal, are the cancers with the highest heritable components. A substantial proportion of familiar breast cancer (~25%) is explained by mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes [1,2]. The excess of familial risk associated with sporadic breast cancer (as well as the unexplained genetic risk in familial breast cancer) may be better explained by the effect of multiple weakly predisposing alleles [3,4]. There is much interest in the search for low penetrance gene/variants for breast cancer, which could exist with relatively high prevalence in the general population. Many polymorphisms have been proposed as candidates for susceptibility to sporadic breast cancer but reported positive associations have rarely been replicated in independent studies [6,7,8,9]
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