Population and breast cancer patients’ analysis reveals the diversity of genomic variation of the BRCA genes in the Mexican population

Interpretation of variants of unknown significance (VUS) in genetic tests is complicated in ethnically diverse populations, given the lack of information regarding the common spectrum of genetic variation in clinically relevant genes. Public availability of data obtained from high-throughput genotyping and/or exome massive parallel sequencing (MPS)-based projects from several thousands of outbred samples might become useful tools to evaluate the pathogenicity of a VUS, based on its frequency in different populations. In the case of the Mexican and other Latino populations, several thousands of samples have been genotyped or sequenced during the last few years as part of different efforts to identify common variants associated to common diseases. In this report, we analyzed Mexican population data from a sample of 3985 outbred individuals, and additional 66 hereditary breast cancer patients were analyzed in order to better define the spectrum of common genomic variation of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Our analyses identified the most common genetic variants in these clinically relevant genes as well as the presence and frequency of specific pathogenic mutations present in the Mexican population. Analysis of the 3985 population samples by MPS identified three pathogenic mutations in BRCA1, only one population sample showed a BRCA1 exon 16–17 deletion by MLPA. This resulted in a basal prevalence of deleterious mutations of 0.10% (1:996) for BRCA1 and 11 pathogenic mutations in BRCA2, resulting in a basal prevalence of deleterious mutations of 0.276% (1:362) for BRCA2, combined of 0.376% (1:265). Separate analysis of the breast cancer patients identified the presence of pathogenic mutations in 18% (12 pathogenic mutations in 66 patients) of the samples by MPS and 13 additional alterations by MLPA. These results will support a better interpretation of clinical studies focused on the detection of BRCA mutations in Mexican and Latino populations and will help to define the general prevalence of deleterious mutations within these populations. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s40246-018-0188-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.