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Dietary lignan intake and androgen receptor expression in breast tumors

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Abstract

Purpose

Lignans, a class of phytoestrogen commonly found in the Western diet, have been linked to decreased breast cancer risks in epidemiologic studies. Similar to estrogen receptors, the androgen receptor (AR), a prognostic factor in breast tumors, may be affected by lignans. However, few studies have investigated this link in the context of breast cancer etiology. We evaluated the relationship between dietary lignan intake and AR expression in incident breast tumors.

Methods

Tumor tissue, epidemiological, and clinical data were collected from 216 women with incident, primary, histologically confirmed breast cancer enrolled in the Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) Data Bank and BioRepository (DBBR). On average, three tumor cores from each participant were assembled into a tissue micro array. After immunohistochemical staining, a trained RPCI pathologist determined AR status of each core. Lignan intake was calculated from a food frequency questionnaire collected upon enrollment into the DBBR.

Results

We observed a weak positive association between dietary lignans and AR expression [β (SE) 27.6 (17.0), p 0.10], and there was no significant difference in lignan intake across categories of AR expression (p = 0.09, R 2 = 0.35).

Conclusion

Our results do not support a clear relationship between dietary lignan intake and AR expression. This investigation is the first, to our knowledge, to examine dietary lignan intake and AR expression in breast tumors. Further research is needed within a larger, more representative sample to determine whether lignan intake is truly associated with AR expression.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute Grant R03CA128035; the DataBank and BioRepository and the Pathology Resource Network are Roswell Park Cancer Center Support Grant shared resources, supported by P30CA016056-32 from the National Cancer Institute.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA

    AnnaLynn M. Williams, Matthew Bonner & Heather M. Ochs-Balcom

  2. Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, NY, USA

    AnnaLynn M. Williams

  3. Department of Pathology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA

    Helena Hwang

  4. Department of Pathology, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Helena Hwang & Carl Morrison

  5. Department of Cancer Prevention and Control, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Susan E. McCann

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  1. AnnaLynn M. Williams
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Correspondence to AnnaLynn M. Williams.

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Williams, A.M., Bonner, M., Ochs-Balcom, H.M. et al. Dietary lignan intake and androgen receptor expression in breast tumors. Cancer Causes Control 26, 311–317 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-014-0504-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-014-0504-1

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