European journal of clinical investigation
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Eur. J. Clin. Invest. · Feb 1995
Bone mineral density and its relationship to skin colour in Caucasian females.
Low bone mineral density (BMD) is associated with a high risk of osteoporosis and fracture. While women with darker skin, such as women of American African origin, are reputed to have lower risk osteoporosis and fractures compared with women with fair skin such as Caucasian women, with Oriental women having intermediate levels of risk, the reasons for these differences are not clear. We examined the relationship between BMD and skin colour in a population based study of 2005 Caucasian women with a mean age of 58.1 years, resident in Cambridge and categorized into fair, medium and dark complexions by self-report. ⋯ The associations remained after stratifying for smoking habit and years since menopause. In a cohort of Caucasian women resident at latitude 52 degrees North, fair-skinned women have lower BMD values than darker-skinned women. This association between skin colour and BMD may reflect sunlight exposure times and underlying vitamin D status.
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Eur. J. Clin. Invest. · Feb 1995
Screening for germline mutations of the p53 gene in familial breast cancer patients.
The constitutive DNA from members of four families showing predisposition to breast cancer was amplified by PCR in the region of exons 5, 6, 7 and 8 of the p53 proto-oncogene. Single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) gels were used to compare patient DNA with mutant and wild-type control samples. ⋯ The lack of inherited mutations was confirmed for exons 5 and 7 by solid-phase DNA sequencing. The results lend further support to the view that inherited mutations in p53 alleles are not a significant contributor to breast cancer predisposition and it is not, therefore, clinically worthwhile to screen predisposed or potentially predisposed families for germline mutations in the p53 gene.