title: Gene-environment interaction and risk of breast cancer.
abstract: Hereditary, genetic factors as well as lifestyle and environmental factors, for example, parity and body mass index, predict breast cancer development. Gene-environment interaction studies may help to identify subgroups of women at high-risk of breast cancer and can be leveraged to discover new genetic risk factors. A few interesting results in studies including over 30,000 breast cancer cases and healthy controls indicate that such interactions exist. Explorative gene-environment interaction studies aiming to identify new genetic or environmental factors are scarce and still underpowered. Gene-environment interactions might be stronger for rare genetic variants, but data are lacking. Ongoing initiatives to genotype larger sample sets in combination with comprehensive epidemiologic databases will provide further opportunities to study gene-environment interactions in breast cancer. However, based on the available evidence, we conclude that associations between the common genetic variants known today and breast cancer risk are only weakly modified by environmental factors, if at all.
authors.affiliation: Unit of Genetic Epidemiology, Division of Cancer Epidemiology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Im Neuenheimer Feld 581, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Anja
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rudolph
authors.affiliation: Unit of Genetic Epidemiology, Division of Cancer Epidemiology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Im Neuenheimer Feld 581, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany.|University Cancer Center Hamburg (UCCH), University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistraße 52, 20246 Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Jenny
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chang-Claude
authors.affiliation: Division of Molecular Pathology, Netherlands Cancer Institute - Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital; Plesmanlaan 121, 1066 CX Amsterdam, The Netherlands.|Division of Psychosocial Research and Epidemiology, Netherlands Cancer Institute - Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital, Plesmanlaan 121, 1066 CX Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Marjanka K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Schmidt
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000453:epidemiology; D015992:Body Mass Index; D001942:Breast Feeding / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics*; D015914:Estrogen Replacement Therapy / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D059647:Gene-Environment Interaction; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D005838:Genotype; D006801:Humans; D008572:Menarche; D008593:Menopause; D009765:Obesity / Q000453:epidemiology; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D017584:Reproductive History; D012307:Risk Factors; D057185:Sedentary Behavior