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The mitochondrial genome encodes for thirty-seven proteins, among them thirteen are essential for the oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) system. Inherited variation in mitochondrial genes may influence cancer development through changes in mitochondrial proteins, altering the OXPHOS process and promoting the production of reactive oxidative species.

To investigate the association between mitochondrial genetic variation and breast cancer risk, we tested 314 mitochondrial SNPs (mtSNPs), capturing four complexes of the mitochondrial OXPHOS pathway and mtSNP groupings for rRNA and tRNA, in 2,723 breast cancer cases and 3,260 controls from the Multiethnic Cohort Study.

We examined the collective set of 314 mtSNPs as well as subsets of mtSNPs grouped by mitochondrial OXPHOS pathway, complexes, and genes, using the sequence kernel association test and adjusting for age, sex, and principal components of global ancestry. We also tested haplogroup associations using unconditional logistic regression and adjusting for the same covariates. Stratified analyses were conducted by self-reported maternal race/ethnicity. No significant mitochondrial OXPHOS pathway, gene, and haplogroup associations were observed in African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Hawaiians. In European Americans, a global test of all genetic variants of the mitochondrial genome identified an association with breast cancer risk (P = 0.017, q = 0.102). In mtSNP-subset analysis, the gene MT-CO2 (P = 0.001, q = 0.09) in Complex IV (cytochrome c oxidase) and MT-ND2 (P = 0.004, q = 0.19) in …