Allelic expression imbalance polymorphisms in susceptibility chromosome regions and the risk and survival of breast cancer.

Allelic expression imbalance (AEI) has been applied to indicate potential function of genetic variants. Combining earlier results from global differential allele-specific expression analysis and genome wide association studies (GWASs), we select the single nuclear polymorphisms (SNPs) exhibiting AEI phenomenon located in breast cancer susceptibility chromosome regions, and evaluate their associations with breast cancer risk and survival. We examined the genotypes of 10 AEI SNPs in 1551 incident breast cancer cases and 1605 age-frequency matched controls from Guangzhou, China. In total, 1168 cases were followed up. MUC16 rs2591592 (AT/AA vs. TT) was associated with an increased risk of premenopausal breast cancer (OR [95%CI]: 1.30 [1.07, 1.57]); SLAMF1 rs1061217 (CT/TT vs. CC) decreased the risk of breast cancer among overweight women (OR [95%CI]: 0.74 [0.57, 0.96]) but increased the risk among normal-weight women (OR [95%CI]: 1.15 [1.01, 1.39]); ZNF331 rs8109631 (AG/AA vs. GG) and CHRAC1 rs10216653 (GC/GG vs. CC) were associated with progression free survival among breast cancer patients with negative ER/PR status and higher clinical stage (HRs [95%CIs]: 2.39 [1.14, 5.00], 1.85 [1.03, 3.32], and 0.49 [0.30, 0.80], respectively). ZNF331 rs8109631 and CHRAC1 rs10216653 were further found to represent several functional SNPs through bioinformatic analysis. In conclusion, our findings demonstrated suggestive associations of AEI polymorphisms with breast cancer risk (MUC16 rs2591592 and SLAMF1 rs1061217) and prognosis (ZNF331 rs8109631 and CHRAC1 rs10216653). © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.