A study based on whole-genome sequencing yields a rare variant at 8q24 associated with prostate cancer

Julius Gudmundsson, Kari Stefansson and colleagues identify a low-frequency variant at 8q24 strongly associated with prostate cancer risk. They also confirm association of a recently reported risk variant in HOXB13 in samples from multiple European populations. In Western countries, prostate cancer is the most prevalent cancer of men and one of the leading causes of cancer-related death in men. Several genome-wide association studies have yielded numerous common variants conferring risk of prostate cancer. Here, we analyzed 32.5 million variants discovered by whole-genome sequencing 1,795 Icelanders. We identified a new low-frequency variant at 8q24 associated with prostate cancer in European populations, rs188140481[A] (odds ratio (OR) = 2.90; P combined = 6.2 × 10 −34 ), with an average risk allele frequency in controls of 0.54%. This variant is only very weakly correlated ( r 2 ≤ 0.06) with previously reported risk variants at 8q24, and its association remains significant after adjustment for all known risk-associated variants. Carriers of rs188140481[A] were diagnosed with prostate cancer 1.26 years younger than non-carriers ( P = 0.0059). We also report results for a previously described HOXB13 variant (rs138213197[T]), confirming it as a prostate cancer risk variant in populations from across Europe.