deCODE and Radboud University Discover Common Variants in the Human Genome Conferring Risk of Bladder Cancer

Scientists at deCODE genetics and colleagues at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands report the discovery of two common single-letter variants in the human genome (SNPs) that confer increased risk of urinary bladder cancer.

Approximately 20% of people of European descent carry two copies of the first variant, a version of a SNP on chromosome 8q24, putting them at a 50% higher risk of developing bladder cancer than those without the variant. Individuals who carry two copies of a common version of another SNP on chromosome 3 were found to be at a 40% higher risk of the disease than non-carriers. These are the best-replicated genetic variants ever linked to bladder cancer risk, and the study analyzed genotypic data from more than 40,000 patients and controls from Iceland, the Netherlands and eight other European countries.

The paper, entitled ‘Sequence variant on 8q24 confers susceptibility to urinary bladder cancer,’ will appear today in the online edition of Nature Genetics at www.nature.com/ng.