Background: Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women. There is increasing evidence suggesting that ORAI1, components of store-operated calcium channel, play a pivotal role in breast cancer progression and metastasis.
Methods: A total of 384 female patients with breast cancer were included in this study. We selected five representative tagging ORAI1 SNPs from HapMap database with minimum allele frequency (MAF) >10%. Genotyping was performed using TaqMan allelic discrimination assay. Chi-square (χ²) test was used to analyze statistical differences among control and patient groups in genotype and allelic frequencies.
Results: Two of the ORAI1 SNPs (rs12320939 and rs12313273) were associated with estrogen receptors positive in breast cancer patients under the recessive model. When the Bonferroni correction was performed, the significance still existed. In addition, rs12320939 also associated with the lymph nodal involvement.
Conclusion: We showed that genetic polymorphisms of ORAI1 associated strongly with lymph nodal involvement and estrogen receptors (ERs) positive breast cancer patients in a Taiwanese population.