Breast cancer susceptibility in Chinese women

A genome-wide association study in Chinese women has identified a single nucleotide polymorphism which confers a significant risk of sporadic breast cancer.

Using data from the Shanghai Breast Cancer Study, the researchers located a SNP on chromosome 6 that they say explains about 18 per cent of breast cancers in the general population.

All previous GWA studies for breast cancer risk have been conducted in women of European descent.

The SNP, rs2046210, is located upstream of the gene encoding the oestrogen receptor alpha, which has been implicated in breast cancer aggressiveness.

The association was stronger for ER-negative cancer than for ER-positive, contrary to previous studies.

They found another SNP in the 6q25.1 locus in European women that had a weaker association, leading them to conclude that it is a susceptibility locus for breast cancer.

This locus is also associated with bone mineral density, which is affected by oestrogen, according to another GWA undertaken by Icelandic researchers last year.

The study, led by Dr Wei Zheng of the Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and colleagues at the Shanghai Cancer Institute, is published online in advance in Nature Genetics.