When we examined risk of breast cancer by joint tumor expression in postmenopausal women, we observed that plasma prolactin levels were more strongly associated with a risk of tumors that were positive for both PRLR nuclear and cytoplasmic expression (OR > 11 vs. ≤ 11 ng/mL: 5.90, 95% CI 1.90, 18.30, p-heterogeneity: 0.05) compared to the other three subtypes (Additional file 1: Table S3), although only 21 cases were positive for both PRLR nuclear and cytoplasmic expression. Here, PRLR is linked to breast carcinoma.