Common 5p15.33 and 6p21.33 variants influence lung cancer risk

Richard Houlston and colleagues report a genome-wide association study for lung cancer susceptibility. In addition to confirming a previous association at 15q25.1, they identify and replicate two new risk loci at 6p21.33 and 5p15.33. We conducted a genome-wide association (GWA) study of lung cancer comparing 511,919 SNP genotypes in 1,952 cases and 1,438 controls. The most significant association was attained at 15q25.1 (rs8042374; P = 7.75 × 10 −12 ), confirming recent observations. Pooling data with two other GWA studies (5,095 cases, 5,200 controls) and with replication in an additional 2,484 cases and 3,036 controls, we identified two newly associated risk loci mapping to 6p21.33 (rs3117582, BAT3-MSH5 ; P combined = 4.97 × 10 −10 ) and 5p15.33 (rs401681, CLPTM1L ; P combined = 7.90 × 10 −9 ).