Potential Association of Mitochondrial Haplogroups and A8860G Mutation with Breast Cancer Risk

The last decade has witnessed great progresses regarding the molecular basis of breast cancer with discovery of different nuclear susceptibility genes; in addition investigations and researches regarding mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations in breast cancer have been started. Mitochondrial haplogroup determinants (single nucleotide polymorphism SNP) and somatic mitochondrial mutations have recently been studied as possible risk factors for carcinogenic processes in different tissues, hence in order to identify breast cancer related SNPs and haplogroups among the population of Sulaimaniyah city/Iraq, the entire mitochondrial genome of 20-breast cancer samples and comparable controls were sequenced. Haplogrep 2.0 was used for haplogroup identification; Chi-square and Fishers exact test were applied to assess relational significance. HV haplogroup in the cancer samples appeared to be a risk factor for breast cancer compared to the most common H haplogroup in control samples with a p-values of 0.002 and 0.006 respectively and an Odd Ratio (OR) = 28.00. Besides, SNP (A8860G) was also identified as a risk factor for breast cancer as compared to other randomly selected SNPs (A750G, A1438G and C7028T) with p values {square}0.05 and OR >1.