Germline pathogenic variants of 11 breast cancer genes in 7,051 Japanese patients and 11,241 controls

Pathogenic variants in highly penetrant genes are useful for the diagnosis, therapy, and surveillance for hereditary breast cancer. Large-scale studies are needed to inform future testing and variant classification processes in Japanese. We performed a case-control association study for variants in coding regions of 11 hereditary breast cancer genes in 7051 unselected breast cancer patients and 11,241 female controls of Japanese ancestry. Here, we identify 244 germline pathogenic variants. Pathogenic variants are found in 5.7% of patients, ranging from 15% in women diagnosed
Association between variants in 11 different genes and breast cancer risk has been established and sequencing of these genes is recommended to provide personalized diagnosis, therapy, and surveillance for the high-risk patients and their relatives. Here the authors analyse the frequency of germline pathogenic mutations in these genes specifically in a Japanese population.