Further evidence for the existence of major susceptibility of nasopharyngeal carcinoma in the region near HLA-A locus in Southern Chinese

Background Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a multi-factorial malignancy closely associated with environmental factors, genetic factors and Epstein-Barr virus infection. Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) complex, specially the region near HLA-A locus, was regarded as a major candidate region bearing NPC genetic susceptibility loci in many previous studies including two recent genome-wide association (GWA) studies. To provide further evidence for the NPC susceptibility in the region near HLA-A locus based on other previous studies, we carried out a two-stage hospital-based case control association study including 535 sporadic NPC patients and 525 cancer-free control subjects from Guangdong, a high prevalence area of NPC in China.