Structural chromosomal aberrations as potential risk markers in incident cancer patients

Epidemiological prospective studies have shown that increased chromosomal aberrations (CAs) in peripheral blood lymphocytes may predict cancer risk. Here, we report CAs in newly diagnosed 101 colorectal, 87 lung and 158 breast cancer patients and corresponding healthy controls. Strong differences in distributions of aberrant cells (ACs), CAs, chromatid-type aberrations (CTAs) and chromosome-type aberrations (CSAs) were observed in lung and breast cancer patients as compared to healthy controls. In colorectal cancer (CRC) patients, only CTAs were significantly elevated. Binary logistic regression, adjusted for main confounders, indicates that all the analysed cytogenetic parameters along with smoking were significantly associated with breast and lung cancer risks. Significant differences in terminal deletions between breast cancer patients and corresponding female controls were recorded (0.39 vs. 0.18; P ≤ 0.05). We did not find any association of CAs with TNM (tumor nodus metastasis) stages or histopathological grade in either cancer type. CAs were neither associated with additional tumor characteristics-invasivity, ductal and lobular character, estrogene/progesterone receptors in breast tumors nor with non-small/small cell and bronchogenic/pulmonary types of lung tumors. Our study demonstrates that CAs serve as a predictive marker for breast and lung cancer, whereas only CTAs were elevated in incident CRC patients.