New genetic risk markers identified for pancreatic cancer

A new discovery has been made with help of large DNA analysis of humans, which says that there are several genetic markers to identify pancreatic cancer.

According to the scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the markers were variations in the inherited DNA code at particular locations along chromosomes, and many of them signaled the increased risk of developing the highly lethal disease.

In the analyses of DNA from 7,683 patients with pancreatic cancer and 14,397 control patients without this cancer, all of whom were of European descent, Brian Wolpin, MD, MPH, first author of the report, said that the results confirmed the presence of four risk-associated SNPs that had been identified in a previous, smaller genome-wide association study (GWAS) study. In addition, five new risk markers were discovered and a sixth that was of borderline statistical significance.

The risks linked to each SNP or marker were largely independent and additive, so that they may have utility in future attempts to identify individuals in the general population at higher risk for pancreatic cancer. The average lifetime risk of pancreatic cancer is 1.5%.

The study is published online by Nature Genetics.