Screening of the exonic regions of the ATM gene, as well as known intronic variants, in three materials: Norwegian controls (material 1), Norwegian breast cancer cases (material 2) and American breast cancer cases, with or without ipsilateral breast tumour recurrence (material 3), identified a total of 56 variations; 55,4 % transitions (n = 31), 32,1 % transversions (n = 18) and 12,5 % insertions/deletions (n = 7), [see Additional file 1]. Here, ATM is linked to breast carcinoma.