Background: Genetic susceptibility contributes to the risk of prostate cancer but the underlying genes are largely unknown. Polymorphic loci on chromosome 8q24 have emerged as possible risk factors for breast and prostate cancer from genome-wide association studies.
Objective: We aimed to define the risks associated with two single nucleotide polymorphisms, rs1447295 and rs13281615, in a hospital-based series of prostate cancer patients treated with brachytherapy.
Material and methods: We analyzed genomic DNA samples of 488 prostate cancer cases undergoing brachytherapy at Hannover Medical School, and of 462 male controls from the same location. Genotyping was performed using 5'-exonuclease allelic discrimination assays, and results were evaluated with chi(2) tests and logistic regression analyses.
Results: We investigated whether rs1447295 and rs13281615 are associated with disease risk in a hospital-based prostate cancer case-control series from Northern Germany. The rare allele of rs1447295 was observed at higher frequency among cases than among hospital-based controls (13.9% vs. 10.2%, P = 0.01), and there was a dose-dependent trend towards a higher prevalence of heterozygous and homozygous carriers among the prostate cancer patients (per allele OR 1.42, 95% CI 1.07; 1.87, P = 0.02). By contrast, the rare allele of rs13281615 did not predispose to prostate cancer (per allele OR 0.84, 95% CI 0.70; 1.00, P = 0.05). The distribution of combined 8q24 genotypes was significantly different between cases and controls (P = 0.01).
Conclusion: Our results corroborate previous reports of 8q24 as a prostate cancer susceptibility locus and provide evidence for rs1447295 as a potentially important genetic marker. Further studies are required to confirm whether the adjacent breast cancer-associated variant rs13281615 may be inversely associated with prostate cancer risk.