A replication study examining three common single‐nucleotide polymorphisms and the risk of prostate cancer in a Japanese population

Abstract

Recently, genome-wide association studies have independently identified multiple prostate cancer risk variants on 8q24 and 17q in European and American populations. In this study, we examined the association between three key single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in these two regions and the risk of prostate cancer in a Japanese population. The associations between the rs6983561, rs4430796, and rs1859962 SNPs and prostate cancer susceptibility and tumor aggressiveness were examined in a total of 950 Japanese subjects (518 with sporadic prostate cancer (SPCa), 109 with latent prostate cancer (LPCa), and 323 controls). After adjustments for age, the C allele of rs6983561 and the A allele of rs4430796 were significantly more frequent among the SPCa patients than among the controls. Men who carry these risk alleles have an estimated odds ratio (OR) of 1.55 and 1.35, respectively. Furthermore, the SNPs rs6983561 and rs4430796 were associated with a susceptibility to aggressive prostate cancer, whereas rs1859962 was associated with non-aggressive prostate cancer. However, no significant difference was observed between these three polymorphisms and the risk of LPCa. We also examined the cumulative association of these three SNPs and prostate cancer susceptibility. Compared with men who do not have any risk alleles, the ORs increased according to the number of risk alleles that were present (P-value for trend: 8.1 × 10(-4) ). Our results further confirmed that variants at 8q24 and 17q are associated with the risk of prostate cancer and play an important role in tumor aggressiveness.