Metastatic Breast Cancer and Pre-Diagnostic Blood Gene Expression Profiles-The Norwegian Women and Cancer (NOWAC) Post-Genome Cohort.

ABSTRACT: Breast cancer patients with metastatic disease have a higher incidence of deaths from breast cancer than patients with early-stage cancers. Recent findings suggest that there are differences in immune cell function between metastatic and non-metastatic cases, even years before diagnosis. We have analyzed whole blood gene expression by Illumina bead chips in blood samples taken using the PAXgene blood collection system up to two years before diagnosis. The final study sample included 197 breast cancer cases and 197 age-matched controls. We defined a causal directed acyclic graph to guide a Bayesian data analysis to estimate the risk of metastasis associated with the expression of all genes and with relevant sets of genes. We ranked genes and gene sets according to the sign probability for e

SUBMITTER: Holsbo E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7594625 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature