Implications of single nucleotide polymorphisms in CD44 exon 2 for risk of breast cancer

CD44 is a cell-surface glycoprotein involved in many cellular functions including lymphocyte activation, recirculation and homing, hematopoiesis and tumor metastasis, suggesting that CD44 may play an important role in breast cancer development. In this study, we examined whether CD44 exon 2 polymorphisms are associated with increased susceptibility to breast cancer. Direct nucleotide sequencing analysis showed that multiple single nucleotide polymorphisms were present in the CD44 exon 2 coding region in female patients with breast cancer. There was no significant difference in the frequency of any one single nucleotide polymorphism in the CD44 exon 2 coding region between patients with breast cancer and normal donors. However, CD44 polymorphisms in the CD44 exon 2 coding region were identified in approximately 40% of patients with breast cancer, which was significantly higher than in normal donors (odds ratio, 9.34; 95% confidence interval = 2.58-33.82; P < 0.0001). The Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test analysis showed that the patients with the CD44 polymorphisms in CD44 exon 2 coding sequence had breast cancer at earlier ages, 49 ± 3 versus 62 ± 2 years (P < 0.0005), and larger tumor burdens (4.9 ± 1.22 vs. 1.6 ± 0.15 mm, P < 0.01) at the time of diagnosis. Interestingly, African-American female patients having the CD44 polymorphisms in CD44 exon 2 coding sequence were diagnosed with breast cancer at very young age (41 ± 2 years). Our results show that CD44 exon 2 polymorphisms are associated with breast cancer development, and such analysis may be effectively used in the evaluation of risk, prediction of cancer, prevention, diagnosis, and epidemiological studies of breast cancer.