A genome-wide association study identifies susceptibility loci for Wilms tumor

Nazneen Rahman and colleagues report the results of a genome-wide association study of Wilms tumor. They show that common variants at 2p24 and 11q14 influence susceptibility to this rare pediatric kidney tumor. Wilms tumor is the most common renal malignancy of childhood. To identify common variants that confer susceptibility to Wilms tumor, we conducted a genome-wide association study in 757 individuals with Wilms tumor (cases) and 1,879 controls. We evaluated ten SNPs in regions significantly associated at P < 5 × 10 −5 in two independent replication series from the UK (769 cases and 2,814 controls) and the United States (719 cases and 1,037 controls). We identified clear significant associations at 2p24 (rs3755132, P = 1.03 × 10 −14 ; rs807624, P = 1.32 × 10 −14 ) and 11q14 (rs790356, P = 4.25 × 10 −15 ). Both regions contain genes that are plausibly related to Wilms tumorigenesis. We also identified candidate association signals at 5q14, 22q12 and Xp22.