C-band heteromorphism in breast cancer patients

ABSTRACT

C-band heteromorphism, including size localization variants, has been shown to correlate well with the occurrence of malignant diseases. This study was conducted to investigate the aberration of the C-band region of chromosomes 1, 9 and 16, including size variation, intra- pair size asymmetry and inversion by comparing the frequency of heteromorphism in patients with breast cancer and healthy subjects. This is useful to establish the significance of the variability of chromosome constitutive heterochromatin areas in a risk of malignancy. The study included 27 female patients with breast cancer and 30 normal healthy female subjects as controls. Peripheral lymphocytes culture and C-banding were done for all of them. The size of the heterochromatic region was evaluated using 16 p as a reference. Size heteromorphism between homologous chromosomes was considered when there was an intra-pair difference of one or more levels. Inversions, whether partial or total, were recorded. There was a significant increase in the size of C-band for chromosome 1 between patients and controls [X2 = 9.17]. Intra-pair size asymmetry of heterochromatin was more frequent in breast cancer patients than in the controls and the differences were statistically significant for chromosomes 1, 9 and 16. For localization variants, a significant increase in the frequency of partial inversion in chromosome No. 1 was found between the two groups [X2 = 4.44]