Evidence for an Association Between Prostate Cancer and Chromosome 8q24 and 10q11 Genetic Variants in African American Men: The Flint Men's Health Study

BACKGROUND. Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed non-skin cancer in men in the United States and the second leading cause of cancer-related mortality. African American men have substantially increased risk of both being diagnosed and dying from the disease. Recent genome-wide genetic association studies have identified a number of common single nucleotide genetic polymorphisms (SNPs) that are associated with prostate cancer in men of Europeandescent.Onlyasmallnumberofstudieshaveevaluatedtheassociationbetweenthese genetic variants and prostate cancer in African Americans. METHODS. We used logistic regression models to assess the association between prostate cancerinAfricanAmericanmenand24SNPsfromregionspreviouslyreportedtobeassociated with prostate cancer in men of European descent. RESULTS. We found nominal evidence (P <0.05) for association between prostate cancer and three chromosome 8q24 (rs6983561, rs16901979, and rs7000448) and two 10q11 (rs7904463 and rs10740051) SNPs. CONCLUSIONS. Weconfirmrecentreportsthat8q24variantsidentifiedtobeassociatedwith prostate cancer in men of European descent are also associated with prostate cancer in African Americans. Ourreport isthefirsttofind evidenceofassociationbetweenSNPsnearMSMBand prostate cancer in African Americans. Of note, rs7000448 is in strong linkage disequilibrium withrs10761581inNCOA4,aSNPthathasbeenimplicatedtobeindependentlyassociated,with respect to the widely reported SNP rs10993994 in the nearby gene MSMB, with prostate cancer in men of European descent. Prostate 71: 225–231, 2011. # 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.