Background: As breast and ovarian cancers may have similar etiologies, this study aimed to evaluate the hypothesis that breast cancer shares common genetic susceptibility variants with ovarian cancer.
Methods: Ten genetic variants in nine loci were previously identified to be associated with ovarian cancer risk among Caucasian women; an additional 353 variants in high-linkage disequilibrium (r(2) ≥ 0.6) among Han Chinese were identified. Data were available from the Affymetrix Genome-Wide Array (6.0) or MACH imputation for 25 and 78 common genetic variants [minor allele frequency (MAF) ≥0.05], respectively. Associations with breast cancer risk were evaluated by additive logistic regression models among 2,918 breast cancer cases and 2,324 controls.
Results: No associations with breast cancer risk were evident for 103 ovarian cancer susceptibility variants in five loci. Four loci were not evaluated, as they included only rare variants (MAF < 0.05).
Conclusions: Ovarian cancer susceptibility variants identified in Caucasian women were not associated with breast cancer risk among 5,242 Chinese women.
Impact: These findings suggest that breast and ovarian cancer may not share common susceptibility variants among Chinese women.