ArticleBMC cancer2025
Association between polygenic risk and survival in breast cancer patients.
Article in BMC cancer, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Promises under pressure: the modest predictive power of polygenic risk scores.European journal of human genetics : EJHG · 2026Article
- Germline determinants of risk and molecular subtype in young-onset lung cancer.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPolygenic risk scores (PRS) estimate an individual’s germline genetic predisposition to a quantitative trait and/or risk of disease. Several PRS have been developed for cancer risk with the goal of improved risk screening. Here, we sought to establish whether PRS for cancer risk and other common traits may influence survival for patients with cancer.
methodsWe conducted a PRS survival analysis using 23,770 cancer patients of European ancestry from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Profile cohort.
resultsWe identified an association between PRS for breast cancer risk and longer patient survival (HR = 0.89 (95% CI: 0.84–0.95), p = 1.50 × 10–4, < 5% FDR), implying that individuals at high genetic risk had better outcomes. High PRS individuals were also significantly less likely to harbor somatic TP53 mutations, consistent with having less aggressive tumors. This association persisted when including tumor grade and became more protective when restricting to ER-negative tumors (HR = 0.78 (95% CI: 0.68–0.89), p = 1.69 × 10–4). Potential confounders such as hormone receptor status, age, grade, stage, and ER-targeted therapy did not fully explain this association, nor was there statistical evidence of index event bias at individual variants. We did not observe significant associations between cancer risk and survival for other cancers, suggesting that this mechanism may be largely unique to breast cancer. However, we did observe associations between shorter survival and type 2 diabetes, bipolar, and pancreatitis PRS (1% FDR).
conclusionsThese findings suggest that higher germline risk may predispose individuals to less aggressive breast cancer tumors and provide novel insights into breast cancer development and prognosis.
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