Variants in the ATM gene associated with a reduced risk of contralateral breast cancer.
Concannon P,
Haile RW,
Børresen-Dale AL,
Rosenstein BS,
Gatti RA,
Teraoka SN,
Diep TA,
Jansen L,
Atencio DP,
Langholz B,
Capanu M,
Liang X,
Begg CB,
Thomas DC,
Bernstein L,
Olsen JH,
Malone KE,
Lynch CF,
Anton-Culver H,
Bernstein JL;
Women's Environment, Cancer, and Radiation Epidemiology Study Collaborative Group.
Collaborators (55)
Bernstein JL, Anton-Culver H, Begg C, Bernstein L, Boice J Jr, Børresen-Dale AL, Capanu M, Concannon P, Gatti RA, Haile RW, Langholz BM, Lynch CF, Malone KE, Olsen JH, Rosenstein B, Shore RE, Stovall M, Thomas DC, Thompson WD, Bernstein JL, Liang X, Wolitzer A, Seminara D, Concannon P, Teraoka S, Olson ER, Kham-Lee K, Haile RW, Diep TA, Zhou N, Liu Y, Ter-Karapetova E, Hernandez A, Børresen-Dale AL, Jansen L, Rosenstein BS, Atencio DP, Gatti RA, Orlow I, Bernstein L, Donnelly-Allen L, Olsen JH, Mellemkaer L, Lynch CF, DeWall J, Malone KE, Epstein N, Anton-Culver H, Largent J, Langholz BM, Thomas DC, Begg C, Capanu M, Thompson WD, Whittemore A.
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics and Center for Public Health Genomics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22908-0733, USA. patcon@virginia.edu
Between 5% and 10% of women who survive a first primary breast cancer will subsequently develop a second primary cancer in the contralateral breast. The Women's Environment, Cancer, and Radiation Epidemiology Study was designed to identify genetic and environmental determinants of contralateral breast cancer (CBC). In this study, 708 women with asynchronous CBC served as cases and 1,397 women with unilateral breast cancer served as controls. ATM, a serine-threonine kinase, controls the cellular response to DNA double-strand breaks, and has been implicated in breast cancer risk. Complete mutation screening of the ATM gene in all 2,105 study participants identified 240 distinct sequence variants; only 15 were observed in >1% of subjects. Among the rare variants, deleterious alleles resulting in loss of ATM function were associated with a nonsignificant increase in risk of CBC. In contrast, carriers of common variants had a statistically significant reduction in risk of CBC. Four of these 15 variants were individually associated with a significantly decreased risk of second primary breast cancer [c.1899-55T>G, rate ratio (RR), 0.5; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.3-0.8; c.3161C>G, RR, 0.5; 95% CI, 0.3-0.9; c.5558A>T, RR, 0.2; 95% CI, 0.1-0.6; c.6348-54T>C RR, 0.2; 95% CI, 0.1-0.8]. These data suggest that some alleles of ATM may exert an antineoplastic effect, perhaps by altering the activity of ATM as an initiator of DNA damage responses or a regulator of p53.
PMID: 18701470 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
PMCID: PMC2562548 [Available on 2009/08/15]