Effect of Genetic Polymorphisms and Long-Term Tobacco Exposure on the Risk of Breast Cancer

Introduction: Tobacco smoke contains many potentially harmful compounds that may act differently and at different stages in breast cancer development. The focus of this work was to assess the possible role of cigarette smoking (status, dose, duration or age at initiation) and polymorphisms in genes coding for enzymes involved in tobacco carcinogen metabolism (CYP1A1, CYP2A6) or in DNA repair (XRCC1, APEX1, XRCC3 and XPD) in breast cancer development. Methods: We designed a case control study with 297 patients, 217 histologically verified breast cancers (141 smokers and 76 non-smokers) and 80 healthy smokers in a cohort of Spanish women. Results: We found an association between smoking status and early age at diagnosis of breast cancer. Among smokers, invasive carcinoma subtype incidence increased with intensity and duration of smoking (all P-trend < 0.05). When smokers were stratified by smoking duration, we only observed differences in long-term smokers, and the CYP1A1 11e46211e genotype was associated with increased risk of breast cancer (OR = 7.12 (1.98-25.59)). Conclusions: Our results support the main effect of CYP1A1 in estrogenic metabolism rather than in tobacco carcinogen activation in breast cancer patients and also confirmed the hypothesis that CYP1A1 11e462Val, in association with long periods of active smoking, could be a breast cancer risk factor.