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news.Scientists at DeCode genetics, along with academic colleagues in Iceland, the US and Sweden, have discovered a common genetic variant that predisposes men to prostate cancer.
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DeCode now plans to use the discovery of the variation in chromosome 8 to develop a diagnostic test to improve screening for the disease.
According to the researchers, about 19% of men of European ancestry with prostate cancer carry at least one copy of the variant, which confers an approximately 60% increase in risk of the disease and accounts for approximately 8% of cases.
The variant confers roughly the same increase in risk among African Americans but is twice as common. The variant thus accounts for approximately 16% of prostate cancer among African American men and thereby contributes to the higher incidence of the disease among that population.
“As this variant also appears to be associated with the development of more aggressive prostate tumors, a diagnostic test for the variant may enable doctors to make more informed decisions as to how closely they should monitor those who are at high risk, and how aggressively they should treat the disease once it presents,” said Kari Stefansson, CEO of DeCode and senior author on the study.