Associations of alcohol consumption with expression of CD44, CD24, and ALDH1A1 stem cell markers in benign breast biopsy samples.

PURPOSE

We investigated the associations of alcohol consumption with CD44, CD24, and ALDH1A1 stem cell markers' expression in non-cancerous breast tissue.

METHODS

We included 312 cancer-free women with biopsy-confirmed benign breast disease (BBD) from the Nurses' Health Study (NHS) and NHS II cohorts. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was performed on tissue microarrays (TMAs) that were created from histologically normal breast tissue. For each core, the IHC expression was assessed using semi-automated software and expressed as % of positively stained cells for each marker out of the total cell count. All expression measures were log-transformed. Alcohol consumption data was obtained from semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaires. Information on other covariates was collected on the initial questionnaire and updated biennially thereafter. We examined associations for recent (at the time of biopsy) and cumulative average alcohol consumption (from all questionnaires before the biopsy), modeled as continuous (drinks/day) and categorical (none, <1 drink/day, ≥1 drinks/day). Generalized linear regression was used to examine the associations of alcohol with each marker's log-transformed expression (in stroma and epithelium), adjusting for known breast cancer risk factors and BBD subtype.

RESULTS

Recent and cumulative average alcohol consumption were not associated with CD44, CD24, or ALDH1A1 expression in stroma (recent: p-trend = 0.69, 0.98, and 0.84, respectively; cumulative average: p-trend = 0.73, 0.63, and 0.74, respectively) or epithelium (recent: p-trend = 0.82, 0.98, and 0.39, respectively; cumulative average: p-trend = 0.96, 0.0.83, and 0.28, respectively).

CONCLUSION

Our findings suggest that alcohol use is not associated with CD44, CD24, and ALDH1A1 expression in non-cancerous breast tissue from women with benign breast biopsies.