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Familial associations of male breast cancer with other cancers

  • Epidemiology
  • Published:
Breast Cancer Research and Treatment Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Male breast cancer is associated with female breast cancer in families but whether male breast cancer clusters with other discordant cancers has not been studied. As concordant male breast cancers are utterly rare, discordant associations of male breast cancer with other cancers may reveal genetic and possible environmental risk factors contributing to male breast cancer susceptibility.

Methods

We calculated relative risks (RRs) for male breast cancer in families with discordant cancers, and conversely, for discordant cancers in families of male breast cancer patients, based on 15.7 million individuals in the Swedish Family-Cancer Database.

Results

Among 1428 male breast cancer patients, 16.2% had a female relative diagnosed with breast cancer. Ovarian and female anal cancers showed the strongest associations with male breast cancer (p value < 0.0005). The other significant associations included colorectal, small intestinal, and thyroid cancers, cancer of unknown primary and non-Hodgkin lymphoma but these were each based on a single positive association with male breast cancer. The RRs for male breast cancer were increased in families in which multiple patients were diagnosed with diverse cancers, reaching an RR of 2.58 when three or more family members were affected.

Conclusions

The results suggest that male breast cancer shares susceptibility with a number of other cancers but confirmation is needed in other datasets.

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Acknowledgements

A.H. is Jane and Aatos Erkko Professor of Oncology at the University of Helsinki. This work was funded by the German Cancer Aid, the EU Transcan funding by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, University of Helsinki and Helsinki University Central Hospital, and the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (in Swedish: FORTE; Reg. No. 2013-1836), and FORTE (Reg. No. 2014-0804) and the Swedish Research Council (2012-2378 and 2014-10134) as well as ALF funding from Region Skåne.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Molecular Genetic Epidemiology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Im Neuenheimer Feld 580, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany

    Guoqiao Zheng, Hongyao Yu, Asta Försti & Kari Hemminki

  2. Cancer Gene Therapy Group, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Akseli Hemminki

  3. Helsinki University Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Center, Helsinki, Finland

    Akseli Hemminki

  4. Center for Primary Health Care Research, Lund University, 205 02, Malmö, Sweden

    Asta Försti, Kristina Sundquist & Kari Hemminki

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  1. Guoqiao Zheng
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  2. Hongyao Yu
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  3. Akseli Hemminki
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Correspondence to Guoqiao Zheng.

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Conflicts of interest

AH. is shareholder in Targovax ASA. A.H. is employee and shareholder in TILT Biotherapeutics Ltd. Other authors declared no conflict of interest.

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Zheng, G., Yu, H., Hemminki, A. et al. Familial associations of male breast cancer with other cancers. Breast Cancer Res Treat 166, 897–902 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-017-4468-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-017-4468-1

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