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. 2025 Jul 12.
doi: 10.1007/s10552-025-02034-y. Online ahead of print.

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

Maisey Ratcliffe  1 , Yujing J Heng  2 , Gabrielle M Baker  2 , Bernard Rosner  3 , Rulla M Tamimi  4 , Lusine Yaghjyan  5
Affiliations

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

Maisey Ratcliffe et al. Cancer Causes Control. .

Abstract

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.

Keywords: Alcohol consumption; Benign breast disease; Breast cancer.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Conflict of interest: The authors declare no competing interests. Consent to participate: Consent was obtained or implied by return of questionnaires. Consent for publication: Not applicable. Ethical approval: The study protocol was approved by the institutional review boards of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and those of participating registries as required.

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