BRCA germline mutations in an unselected nationwide cohort of Chinese patients with ovarian cancer and healthy controls.

•22.4% (17.1% BRCA1, 5.3% BRCA2) OC patients and 0.4% (0.3 BRCA1, 0.1% BRCA2) controls carried deleterious variants in Chinese.•The dense cluster of mutations in BRCA1 exon10 indicated that hypermutation was a characteristic of Chinese OC patients.•The estimated odds ratio (OR) of OC associated with BRCA1 positive variants was 34.6 (95% CI, 12.5–95.7) in age < 40 group.•The OR was 42.4 (95% CI, 5.9–305.2) in age ≥ 50 group.