apobec3 deletion is associated with breast cancer risk in a sample of southeast iranian population

breast cancer (bc) is considered as one of the most important causes of death worldwide. previous studies showed that apolipoprotein b mrna- editing catalytic polypeptide-like 3 (apobec3) gene deletion significantly increased the risk of bc risk in chinese and european women. the present study aimed to assess the possible impact of apobec3 deletion and the risk of bc in a sample of iranian population. the apobec3 insertion/deletion (i/d) was analyzed in a case- control study including 262 bc patients and 217 healthy women. polymerase chain reaction (pcr) was used to genotype the variant in apobec3 gene. the findings of this study showed that i/d as well as i/d+d/d genotype increased the risk of bc (or= 1.57, 95% ci= 1.07- 2.31, p= 0.025 and or= 1.50, 95% ci= 1.03- 2.19, p= 0.037, respectively) in comparison with i/i genotype. in conclusion, our findings suggest that apobec3 deletion polymorphism increased the risk of bc in an iranian population in the southeast of iran.