What is it about?
We identified a number of SNPs reported in genome-wide association analyses (GWAS) as risk factors for aggressive prostate cancer (PCa) in various European populations, and then defined SNP-SNP interactions, using PLINK software, with nucleic acid samples from a New Zealand cohort. We used this approach to find a gene x environment marker for aggressive PCa, as although statistically gene x environment interactions can be adjusted for, it is highly impossible in practicality, and thus must be incorporated in the search for a reliable biomarker for PCa. We found two intronic SNPs statistically significantly interacting with each other as a risk for aggressive prostate cancer on being compared to healthy controls in a New Zealand population.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the most significant male health concerns worldwide. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are becoming increasingly strong candidate biomarkers for identifying susceptibility to PCa.
Perspectives
Epistatic effects that are crucial to define various biologically-intuitive models of interaction between two SNPs have already been observed in a variety of species11. We believe this is the first study on SNP-SNP interactions associated with aggressive PCa carried out with patients from a New Zealand population. This unique and novel epistatic finding emphasizes the fact that intronic SNPs (and SNP-SNP interactions) can also have a significant effect on the risk of diseases such as aggressive PCa, and need to be investigated further.
Dr Vijay Naidu
Simon Fraser University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: SNP-SNP interactions as risk factors for aggressive prostate cancer, F1000Research, May 2017, Faculty of 1000, Ltd.,
DOI: 10.12688/f1000research.11027.1.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
