Association of sulfotransferase SULT1A1 with breast cancer risk: a meta-analysis of case-control studies with subgroups of ethnic and menopausal statue

BACKGROUND: Sulfotransferase (SULT) plays an important role in the formation of estrogen which is usually conferred as a risk factor for breast cancer. Polymorphism of the SULT1A1 may be closely associated with breast cancer. However, studies on the association between polymorphism and breast cancer have yielded inconsistent results. We performed a meta-analysis including ethnic subgroup and menopausal statue subgroup to investigate the association of SULT1A1 Arg213His polymorphism with breast cancer. METHODS: PubMed, EBSCO and Web of Science databases were searched for the correlative articles up to January 2010 (10362 breast cancer patients and 14250 controls). The risk (odds ratio, OR) was used to estimate the association between SULT1A1 polymorphism and breast cancer risk. All of the data from each study use either fixed-effects or random-effects. RESULTS: We found that SULT1A1 Arg213His had no exact effect to increase the risk of breast cancer (OR = 1.07, 95% CI: 0.97-1.17, P = 0.164), but it did increase the risk of breast cancer among postmenopausal women in the dominant model (OR = 1.28, 95%CI: 1.04-1.58, P = 0.019). No similar effect was found among premenopausal breast cancer women (OR = 1.06, 95%CI: 0.88-1.27, P = 0.537). There was a significant increase in breast cancer risk among Asian women (OR = 2.03, 95% CI: 1.00-4.14, P = 0.051) but not Caucasian women in recessive model. There was publication bias among postmenopausal women subgroup (P = 0.002), however by using the trim and fill method, if the publication bias was the only source of the funnel plot asymmetry, it needed two more studies to be symmetrical. The value of Log OR did not change too much after the adjustment and the fail-safe number of missing studies that would bring the P-value changed was 17. CONCLUSIONS: We concluded that the polymorphism of SULT1A1 Arg213His might be one of the high risk factors for breast cancer in Asian women and in postmenopausal women for all races. We should point out that the publication bias among postmenopausal women may partly account for the result, but the conclusion might not affected deeply by the publication bias.