Variants in tamoxifen metabolizing genes: a case-control study of contralateral breast cancer risk in the WECARE study.

Tamoxifen has been shown to greatly reduce risk of recurrence and contralateral breast cancer (CBC). Still, second primary contralateral breast cancer is the most common malignancy to follow a first primary breast cancer. Genetic variants in CYP2D6 and other drug-metabolizing enzymes that alter the metabolism of tamoxifen may be associated with CBC risk in women who receive the drug. This is the first study to investigate the impact of this variation on risk of CBC in women who receive tamoxifen. From the population-based Women's Environment Cancer and Radiation Epidemiology (WECARE) Study, we included 624 Caucasian women with CBC (cases) and 1,199 women with unilateral breast cancer (controls) with complete information on tumor characteristics and treatment. Conditional logistic regression was used to assess the risk of CBC associated with 112 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 8 genes involved in the metabolism of tamoxifen among tamoxifen users and non-users. After adjustment for multiple testing, no significant association was observed between any of the genotyped variants and CBC risk in either tamoxifen users or non-users. These results suggest that when using a tagSNP approach, common variants in selected genes involved in the metabolism of tamoxifen are not associated with risk of CBC among women treated with the drug.