Genome-Wide Gene-Diabetes and Gene-Obesity Interaction Scan in 8,255 Cases and 11,900 Controls from PanScan and PanC4 Consortia

Abstract

Background: Obesity and diabetes are major modifiable risk factors for pancreatic cancer. Interactions between genetic variants and diabetes/obesity have not previously been comprehensively investigated in pancreatic cancer at the genome-wide level.

Methods: We conducted a gene-environment interaction (GxE) analysis including 8,255 cases and 11,900 controls from four pancreatic cancer genome-wide association study (GWAS) datasets (Pancreatic Cancer Cohort Consortium I-III and Pancreatic Cancer Case Control Consortium). Obesity (body mass index ≥30 kg/m²) and diabetes (duration ≥3 years) were the environmental variables of interest. Approximately 870,000 SNPs (minor allele frequency ≥0.005, genotyped in at least one dataset) were analyzed. Case-control (CC), case-only (CO), and joint-effect test methods were used for SNP-level GxE analysis. As a complementary approach, gene-based GxE analysis was also performed. Age, sex, study site, and principal components accounting for population substructure were included as covariates. Meta-analysis was applied to combine individual GWAS summary statistics.

Results: No genome-wide significant interactions (departures from a log-additive odds model) with diabetes or obesity were detected at the SNP level by the CC or CO approaches. The joint-effect test detected numerous genome-wide significant GxE signals in the GWAS main effects top hit regions, but the significance diminished after adjusting for the GWAS top hits. In the gene-based analysis, a significant interaction of diabetes with variants in the FAM63A (family with sequence similarity 63 member A) gene (significance threshold P < 1.25 × 10^-6) was observed in the meta-analysis (P _GxE = 1.2 ×10^-6, P _Joint = 4.2 ×10^-7).

Conclusions: This analysis did not find significant GxE interactions at the SNP level but found one significant interaction with diabetes at the gene level. A larger sample size might unveil additional genetic factors via GxE scans.

Impact: This study may contribute to discovering the mechanism of diabetes-associated pancreatic cancer.