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Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women. To date, 22 common breast cancer susceptibility loci have been identified accounting for ∼8% of the heritability of the disease. We attempted to replicate 72 promising associations from two independent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in ∼70,000 cases and ∼68,000 controls from 41 case-control studies and 9 breast cancer GWAS. We identified three new breast cancer risk loci at 12p11 (rs10771399; P = 2.7 × 10(-35)), 12q24 (rs1292011; P = 4.3 × 10(-19)) and 21q21 (rs2823093; P = 1.1 × 10(-12)). rs10771399 was associated with similar relative risks for both estrogen receptor (ER)-negative and ER-positive breast cancer, whereas the other two loci were associated only with ER-positive disease. Two of the loci lie in regions that contain strong plausible candidate genes: PTHLH (12p11) has a crucial role in mammary gland development and the establishment of bone metastasis in breast cancer, and NRIP1 (21q21) encodes an ER cofactor and has a role in the regulation of breast cancer cell growth.

Original publication

DOI

10.1038/ng.1049

Type

Journal article

Journal

Nat Genet

Publication Date

22/01/2012

Volume

44

Pages

312 - 318

Keywords

Breast Neoplasms, Chromosomes, Human, Pair 12, Chromosomes, Human, Pair 21, Female, Genetic Loci, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Logistic Models, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Principal Component Analysis, Whites