STAT3 and STAT5b polymorphism contributes to breast cancer risk and clinical outcomes.

We conducted a case-control study in a Chinese population, and investigated the role of STAT3 rs4796793 and STAT5b rs6503691 polymorphisms in the risk and clinical outcome of breast cancer. STAT5b rs6503691 polymorphisms and STAT3 rs4796793 polymorphisms were genotyped by TaqMan SNP Genotyping Assays on the ABI 7500 fast real-time PCR platform. Unconditional logistic regression analyses showed that subjects carrying the GG genotype of STAT3 rs4796793 had a significantly increased risk of breast cancer, with an adjusted OR (95% CI) of 0.35 (0.12-0.95). In the Cox proportional hazards model, we observed that individuals carrying CG+GG genotype of STAT3 rs4796793 was associated with reduced risk of death from breast cancer when compared with CC genotype (HR = 0.43, 95% CI = 0.20-0.93). Our study found that STAT3 rs4796793 polymorphism plays an important role in influence the development and overall survival of breast cancer patients.