Candidate gene approach evaluates association between innate immunity genes and breast cancer risk in Korean women

Objectives: This study was conducted to investigate the role of common variation in innate immunity-related genes as susceptibility factors to breast cancer risk in Korean women. Methods: Total 1536 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 203 genes were analyzed by Illumina GoldenGate assay in 209 cases and the same numbers of controls. Both SNP and gene-based tests were used to evaluate the association with breast cancer risk. The robustness of results was further evaluated with permutation method, false discovery rate and haplotype analyses. Results: Both SNP and gene-based analyses showed promising associations with breast cancer risk for 17 genes: OR10J3, FCER1A, NCF4, CNTNAP1, CTNNB1, KLKB1, ITGB2, ALOX12B, KLK2, IRAK3, KLK4, STAT6, NCF2, CCL1, C1QR1, MBP and NOS1. The most significant association with breast cancer risk was observed for the OR10J3 SNP (rs2494251, P-value = 1.2 × 10^-4) and FCER1A SNP (rs7548864, P-value = 7.7 × 10⁴). Gene-based permutation and false discovery rate P-values for OR10J3 SNP (rs2494251) with breast cancer risk were also significant (P = 4 × 10_-5 and 0.008, respectively). Haplotype analyses supported these findings that OR10J3 and FCER1A were most significantly associated with risk for breast cancer (P = 2 × 10^-4 and 0.004, respectively). Conclusion: This study suggests that common genetic variants in the OR10J3 and FCER1A be strongly associated with breast cancer risk among Korean women.