Gene changes may predict prostate cancer

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Gene changes in five chromosome regions appear to have a combined effect for increasing the risk of prostate cancer, according to a report in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Previous reports have linked several of these changes or "variants" with prostate cancer, but with each variant, the associations are only moderate. The focus of the present study was to determine if the association would be stronger if the variants were combined.

Dr. William B. Isaacs, from the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and colleagues assessed the individual and combined contribution of 16 genetic variants (within the five chromosome regions) to prostate cancer risk in a Swedish population consisting of 2,893 men with and 1,781 men without prostate cancer.

Several single variants were associated with prostate cancer. The combination of the strongest variant from each of the five chromosome regions with a family history of prostate cancer accounted for 46 percent of the prostate cancer cases seen.

Men with a gene variant from each chromosomal region plus a family history were 9.5-times more likely to have prostate cancer than men without any of these factors.

"This is significant and could affect clinical care," senior researcher Dr. Jianfeng Xu, from the Center for Human Genomics in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, said in a statement. "The information could substantially improve physicians' ability to assess risk and determine the need for more aggressive screening or even a biopsy."

SOURCE: The New England Journal of Medicine, online January 16, 2008.