Percent mammographic density (PD) is an estimate of the proportion of stromal and epithelial breast tissues on the mammogram image. Adjusted for age and body mass index (BMI), PD is one of the strongest risk factors for breast cancer, and women in the highest quartile of density have a 3- to 5-fold increased risk compared to women in the lowest quartile [1]. Twin and family studies have shown that PD is highly heritable and that inherited factors are estimated to explain between 30 and 60% of the variance in this trait [2–5]. To date, several genetic loci or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been identified to be associated with percent density using genome-wide association studies (GWAS), including a novel locus on chromosome 12q24 and established breast cancer loci, ZNF365, ESR1, LSP1 and RAD51L1, suggesting shared heritability between PD and breast cancer [6–8]. However, together these SNPs are estimated to account for less than 6% of the variance in PD, leaving much of the genetic contribution to this trait unexplained.

Like SNPs, the deletion or amplification of segments of DNA, known as copy number variation (CNV), are common in the germline and have been implicated in the risk of diseases including neuroblastoma, cataracts, and cancer [9–13]. In fact, CNVs are estimated to account for 13% of the human genome [9, 14, 15]. While the mechanisms underlying the development of CNVs remain generally unknown, it has been shown that CNVs are frequently located near telomeres, centromeres, and proximal duplicated regions [9, 16, 17]. Furthermore, rare germline genomic duplications and deletions have been shown to disrupt high-penetrance tumor suppressor genes, such as the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, in breast cancer patients, and have been demonstrated to aggregate within families [18–20]. Several recent publications have linked germline copy number variation (CNV) in other regions of the genome, including both inter- and intra-genic regions, with risk or recurrence of breast cancer [21–24].

As PD has been shown to be highly heritable, we hypothesized that some of the variance not explained by associated SNPs could be due to germline CNVs. CNVs have been shown to have adequate coverage on current SNP arrays, at least for large and intermediate size CNVs (CNVs >5 kb) [17], and the size of identified deletions and amplifications in most of the prior studies with cancer ranged from intermediate (4 kb) to large (2 Mb). Therefore, using data from two independent GWAS studies, we performed the first study to examine whether CNVs are associated with PD.

The evaluation of the log R ratio (LRR) standard deviation, B-allele frequency (BAF) drift and wave factor for the 595 members of the Minnesota Breast Cancer Family Study (MBCFS) resulted in exclusion of ten subjects (Additional file 2). Thus, 585 patients were analyzed to identify associations between CNV and PD, adjusted for age, BMI and menopausal status. PD was lower in the Mayo VTE population, partly due to the slightly older age and higher BMI, but also due to drift in the PD measure can occur with time (Table 1).Table 1

Characteristics of subjects used in the discovery and replication phases

Analysis of the 657,172 autosomal chromosome probes from the Illumina 660W Quad identified five regions on four chromosomes [3q26.1 (contained two regions), 8q24.22, 11p15.3, and 17q22] to be significantly associated with PD after adjusting for age, menopausal status, and BMI in MBCFS (Table 2). Candidate regions identified in the initial data reduction analysis step are shown in Additional file 3. Figure 1 shows the probe-level p-values, SNP p-values, recombination rates, and neighboring genes for each of the four chromosomes. Figure 2a–d shows the LRR values for each of the four chromosomes. The two 3q26.1 regions consisted of a total of 30 probes that were significantly associated with PD in MBCFS and were clustered in a region without SNPs on the Illumina 660W platform (Figure 1a). Our algorithm detected two deleted CNV regions at 3q26.1 that were associated with PD in MBCFS. These two regions were separated by a segment defined by four probes that contains both insertions and deletions (Figure 2a). The 8q24.22 region consisted of 6 probes that were significantly associated with PD in MBCFS (Figure 1b). This region contains two genes: HHLA1 and OC90. Upon closer examination of the LRR values, it appears that a single probe (SNP) was driving the association results (Figure 2b). However, while there are SNPs in this region, none were significantly associated with PD (Figure 1b). The 11p15.3 region consisted of 17 probes that were significantly associated with PD in MBCFS (Figure 1c). These 17 probes defined a deleted region on 11p15.3 (Figure 2c). And, while there were SNPs in this region, none were significantly associated with PD (Figure 1c). The 17q22 region consisted of three probes that were significantly associated with PD in MBCFS (Figure 1d). In contrast to the other regions, the 17q22 region had SNPs that were significantly associated with PD; the most significant SNP was rs12936458 (p value = 0.00023). After adjusting for rs12936458, the CNV probes were no longer associated with PD.Table 2

CNV Regions identified in discovery phase (MBCFS) and evaluated in replication cohort (Mayo VTE)

The Mayo VTE controls were used for replication. Similar quality-control exclusions were made for the Mayo VTE controls, resulting in 328 individuals being analyzed (Table 1; Additional file 2). As demonstrated by Figure 3, the Mayo VTE controls showed similar CNVs for the two regions at 3q26.1 (Figure 3a) and the region at 11p15.3 (Figure 3c) as was observed in MBCFS. Alternative versions of these figures for both studies are shown in Additional files 4, 5, 6 and 7. While the CNVs were observed across the two datasets, we did not observe an association with PD in MBCFS. Specifically, only one probe at 3q26.1 showed a significant association with PD in the Mayo VTE controls (p < 0.0001 Table 2; Additional file 8); however, the coefficient was of the opposite direction (Additional file 9).Figure 3

LRR values from the Mayo VTE control samples for a 3q26.1 (2 regions), b 8q24.22, c 11p15.3, and d 17q22. Each row represents a sample and each column represents a probe.

Prior reports have demonstrated that PD is a heritable trait; however, to date, only a small percentage of PD variation is explained by SNPs. To determine whether CNVs account for some of the remaining variability we conducted the first analysis of CNV and PD using two previously-published GWAS datasets. In the discovery set (MBCFS) we identified five candidate regions that were significantly associated with PD: 3q26.1 [2 regions], 8q24.22, 11p15.3 and 17q22.

A CNV at 3q26.1 (163,698,399 to 163,718,292 in GRCh36/hg18; near the one we identified in the present study) has been previously reported to be associated with breast cancer risk in a Japanese population, though the start and end positions are slightly different [23]. We observed two CNVs at this region in both MBCFS and Mayo VTE control samples. However, only a single probe in the 3q26.1 region was observed to be associated in the Mayo VTE replication samples and the effect was in the opposite direction. This discrepancy could be due to the fact that the two datasets had different study designs (MBCFS is a family study and the Mayo VTE controls were obtained from a case–control study) and/or because the PD distributions are different across the two studies. Because the CNV region replicates and because an association with breast cancer risk has been previously reported [23], we suggest that further investigation needs to be undertaken to further try to replicate the result observed in MBCFS. Notably, neither the CNV region identified in the Japanese study or our study mapped to a gene [34, 35]. Lastly, it is important to note that the 3q26.1 regions would not be detected via GWAS analysis using the Illumina 660 W-Quad because there are no known SNPs in this region.

The 8q24 region has been shown to be associated with risk of many cancers, including breast, [36–42]. While our algorithm detected a CNV at 8q24.22 that was associated with PD in the MBCFS samples, we were not able to replicate the results in Mayo VTE. Furthermore, upon further evaluation of the data, it appears that the results are largely being driven by a single probe. Even so, because the 8q24 region has been previously reported, we suggest that further investigation should be undertaken to replicate these results.

Our algorithm identified a CNV at 11p15.3 in MBCFS, which was validated in the Mayo VTE samples. However, we only observed a significant association with PD in the MBCFS samples. To our knowledge, this region has not been identified previously.

A CNV region at 17q22 was identified to be significantly associated with PD in MBCFS. However, we determined that the association between this region and PD was driven by known SNPs in the region. Particularly, after adjusting for the most significant SNP in this region (rs12936458) the CNV was no longer associated with PD. Even so, the 17q22-23 region has previously been implicated in breast cancer risk, and also has been shown to have copy number abnormalities and amplification in breast cancer cell lines and tumors [43–45]. Additionally, CNVs significantly associated with breast cancer risk have been previously reported in the adjacent 17q21 region, at BRCA1 [18, 20]. Therefore, additional examination of 17q21-23 may elucidate the role of CNVs in breast cancer pathogenesis.

Our analysis approach involved performing statistical association tests on the probe-level data and subsequently performing segmentation on the probe-level test statistics to identify candidate regions that are associated with PD [46]. Our approach is different from the majority of CNV analyses where candidate CNVs are first identified for each sample, the candidate CNVS are subsequently grouped together to create consensus regions across all samples, and lastly, the consensus regions are tested for associations with the trait of interest [47–49]. There are at least two problematic aspects of this approach. First, there are numerous CNV detection algorithms available and unfortunately, the consensus of these algorithms is very low [40]. Second, it is not a trivial task to define consensus regions across individuals. Thus, the strength of the approach used herein is that it avoids the variability associated with both identifying candidate CNV regions and defining common CNV regions across individuals. Motivation for our approach is shown in simulations presented by Breheny, who found that probe-level testing can offer a significant increase (>12-fold) in power over traditional CNV-level testing [46]. We acknowledge that probe-level testing can be computationally intensive; however, we minimized this issue by performing segmentation only in those regions where there was some indication of a statistical association. A potential weakness with our approach, as shown by Breheny, is that it may not perform as well when CNV are large and rare. Additionally, our approach is not as sensitive when there are duplications and insertions at the same location. These limitations notwithstanding, our probe-level testing approach identified candidate CNVs that were evident in both datasets, as shown in Figure 2.

In summary, we identified five candidate CNV regions [3q26.1 (2 regions), 8q24.22, 11p15.3 and 17q22] that showed evidence of an association with PD. While three of CNV regions were observed in a second dataset [3q26.1 (2 regions), 11p15.3], we were unable to replicate the associations with PD. However, these CNVs have been previously implicated in breast cancer risk as well as other malignancies. Thus, there is a possibility that they did not replicate in the Mayo VTE samples because of the different experimental design, power and/or the different PD measurements. As such, we recommend additional investigations to further examine these CNVs with PD and breast cancer in other populations to better understand genetic mechanisms by which PD may influence breast cancer risk.