A meta-analysis and in silico analysis of polymorphic variants conferring breast cancer risk in the Indian subcontinent

Abstract

Background: Genetic association studies on breast cancer on the Indian subcontinent have yielded conflicting results, and the precise effect of these variants on breast cancer pathogenesis is not known. Methods: Genomic variants, as obtained from selected studies from the Indian subcontinent, were subjected to random-effects and fixed-effect meta-analysis. Functional annotation of the relevant variants was done through a tried and tested in silico pipeline. Results: We found rs4646903/ CYP1A1, rs1799814/ CYP1A1, rs61886492/ GCPII, del2/ GSTM1, rs4680/ COMT and rs1801394/ MTRR to be associated with breast cancer. The del2/ GSTM1 holds the association in premenopausal women. Conclusions: This is the first study of its kind from the Indian subcontinent analysing the extent of association of variants across populations followed by their functional annotation in the disease pathway.