association study between single nucleotide polymorphisms of vascular endothelial growth factor and risk of breast cancer among iranian population

Background: vascular endothelial growth factor (vegf) is a key mediator of angiogenesis which could act as an invasion factor. the aim of this study was to compare the frequency of alleles and genotypes of three polymorphisms in the vegf gene, the 460t/c, 1154g/a, and 634g/c, between female breast cancer patients and healthy women as controls. methods: in this hospital-based case-control study, we recruited 214 pathologically proven female breast cancer cases and 161 healthy women subjects. the candidate vegf gene polymorphisms were -634g/c (rs2010963), -460t/c (rs833061) and -1154g/a (rs1570360). frequency of genotypes was determined by taqman real-time pcr allelic discrimination assay. univariable and multivariable logistic regressions model were used to assess the odds ratios and corresponding confidence intervals. relative excess risk due to interaction (reri) was used to check potential additive interactions. results: the frequency of vegf -1154g/a genotype in the case and control groups was 39.1 and 37.8%, respectively (p-value = 0.94). the frequency of combined -1154 aa/ga variant genotypes compared with the vegf -1154 gg genotype in case and control groups was 48.8 and 49.4%, respectively (p-value = 0.94). similarly, for the other two vegf snps, -460t/c and -1154g/a, no significant differences were observed in genotype distributions between patients and controls. moreover, we did not find interaction between vegf snps and age for occurrence of breast cancer: reri was 0.78 (95% ci: 0.47-2.03), attributable proportion (ap) due to interaction was 0.37 (95% ci: -0.13-0.88); and synergy index was 3.58 (95% ci: 0.12-106). conclusion: the results suggest that none of the studied polymorphisms in the vegf gene were associated with occurrence of breast cancer in a sample of female iranian adults. larger studies are warranted to confirm the results and evaluate gene-environment interactions.