Mayo Clinic researchers and colleagues at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) have found a connection between DNA alterations on human chromosome 9 and aggressive brain cancer known as glioblastoma. The findings are reported in the current online issue of Nature Genetics.
The study, conducted with different patient populations at each institution, looked for genome-wide associations using individual patient data and information in the Cancer Genome Atlas. Researchers found that persons with the specific alterations -- also known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) -- have a 50 percent higher relative risk of developing glioblastoma.
"This is not to cause those who possess these SNPs to worry about having CT scans every year," advised Robert Jenkins, M.D. Ph.D., genetics researcher and Mayo senior author of the study. He says an individual's environment also has much to do with their risk of cancer and that such external factors may need to be present to trigger onset of brain tumors, even for those with these SNPs. "Increased relative risk is just that -- relative." A normal person's risk of developing a glioblastoma is about 1 in 10,000. The risk is about 1 in 7,000 for a person carrying one of these SNPs.
Each year between 25,000 and 30,000 persons are diagnosed with glioblastomas -- one of the most aggressive forms of brain tumor. The causes are not clear and very few who are diagnosed live beyond five years.
To discover genes that might indicate an increased susceptibility to glioblastomas and other types of brain tumors, the investigators searched over 250,000 variants in 692 adult glioma patients (from the San Francisco Adult Glioma Study; 70 from the Cancer Genome Atlas) and compared them to 3992 controls (3390 from Illumina Control database and 602 from the Genome Atlas). The study was then replicated using independent data from 176 glioma patients and 174 controls from Mayo Clinic. Additional reports in the same issue of Nature Genetics further support the findings with independent replication studies.