Objective: To study the "hot spot" of BRCA1/2 gene mutations in Chinese mainland breast cancer population.
Methods: The known BRCA1/2 gene mutations in author's previous studies were reanalyzed by denaturing high performance liquid chromatography and DNA sequencing method in 177 patients with early onset breast cancer or affected relatives and 426 sporadic breast cancer patients from four breast cancer centers in China.
Results: Three cases were found with BRCA1 5589del8 mutation out of 247 hereditary-predisposing breast cancer patients (70 patients in previous study and 177 patients in current study) and 2 cases with BRCA1 5589del8 mutation out of 426 sporadic breast cancer patients. They had similar even same haplotype.
Conclusion: BRCA1 5589del8 mutation is likely to be the "founder mutation" in Chinese population, but it should be confirmed by further studies.