Research article
Familial relative risks for breast cancer by pathological subtype: a population-based cohort study
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* Corresponding author: Nasim Mavaddat nasim@srl.cam.ac.uk
1 Cancer Research UK, Genetic Epidemiology Unit, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge, Strangeways Research Laboratory, Worts Causeway, Cambridge, CB1 8RN, UK
2 Department of Oncology, University of Cambridge, Strangeways Research Laboratory, Worts Causeway, Cambridge, CB1 8RN, UK
3 Addenbrookes Hospital NHS Trust, Hills Rd, Cambridge, CB2 0QQ, UK
4 Centre for Molecular, Environmental, Genetic and Analytic Epidemiology, The University of Melbourne, 723 Swanston Street, Carlton, VIC 3053, Australia
Breast Cancer Research 2010, 12:R10 doi:10.1186/bcr2476
Published: 10 February 2010Abstract
Introduction
The risk of breast cancer to first degree relatives of breast cancer patients is approximately twice that of the general population. Breast cancer, however, is a heterogeneous disease and it is plausible that the familial relative risk (FRR) for breast cancer may differ by the pathological subtype of the tumour. The contribution of genetic variants associated with breast cancer susceptibility to the subtype-specific FRR is still unclear.
Methods
We computed breast cancer FRR for subtypes of breast cancer by comparing breast cancer incidence in relatives of breast cancer cases from a population-based series with known estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) or human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) status with that expected from the general population. We estimated the contribution to the FRR of genetic variants associated with breast cancer susceptibility using subtype-specific genotypic relative risks and allele frequencies for each variant.
Results
At least one marker was measured for 4,590 breast cancer cases, who reported 9,014 affected and unaffected first-degree female relatives. There was no difference between the breast cancer FRR for relatives of patients with ER-negative (FRR = 1.78, 95% confidence intervals (CI): 1.44 to 2.11) and ER-positive disease (1.82, 95% CI: 1.67 to 1.98), P = 0.99. There was some suggestion that the breast cancer FRR for relatives of patients with ER-negative disease was higher than that for ER-positive disease for ages of the relative less than 50 years old (FRR = 2.96, 95% CI: 2.04 to 3.87; and 2.05, 95% CI: 1.70 to 2.40 respectively; P = 0.07), and that the breast cancer FRR for relatives of patients with ER-positive disease was higher than for ER-negative disease when the age of the relative was greater than 50 years (FRR = 1.76, 95% CI: 1.59 to 1.93; and 1.41, 95% CI: 1.08 to 1.74 respectively, P = 0.06). We estimated that mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 explain 32% of breast cancer FRR for relatives of patients with ER-negative and 9.4% of the breast cancer FRR for relatives of patients with ER-positive disease. Twelve recently identified common breast cancer susceptibility variants were estimated to explain 1.9% and 9.6% of the FRR to relatives of patients with ER-negative and ER-positive disease respectively.
Conclusions
FRR for breast cancer was significantly increased for both ER-negative and ER-positive disease. Including receptor status in conjunction with genetic status may aid risk prediction in women with a family history.