We selected 13 tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (tSNPs) to investigate whether they were associated with breast cancer risk in the Chinese Han population. Upon statistical analyses of clinical data from 551 patients and 577 controls, we found that six of the 13 SNPs were associated with breast cancer; namely, rs4973768(Odds ratio (OR) = 1.30, 95% confidence interval (CI) =1.01-1.67), rs981782(OR =1.30, 95% CI=1.01-1.66), rs1432679(OR =0.84, 95% CI=0.70-0.99), rs10759243(OR=1.30, 95%CI=1.09-1.55), rs10822013(OR =1.18, 95% CI=1.00-1.39) and rs704010(OR =1.63, 95% CI=1.04-2.56). When stratified based on breast cancer subtype, our analyses revealed that three SNPs (rs981782, rs10759243 and rs704010) correlated with ER+ breast cancer, while another three (rs4973768, rs1432679 and rs10822013) correlated with ER- breast cancer. We obtained similar results while investigating the correlation of SNPs with PR status or clinical stage. Our results suggest that associations identified between SNPs and breast cancer through genome-wide association studies (GWAS) may not always be generalizable across races.
Keywords: Chinese population; breast cancer; case-control study; single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP).