Scientists Reykjavik-based deCODE Genetics, in collaboration with Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, have announced the discovery of two common variants in the human genome that increase the risk of bladder cancer.
Approximately 20 percent of people of European descent carry two copies of the first variant, which puts them at a 50 percent higher risk of developing bladder cancer than those without the variant. Bladder cancer is the sixth most common type of cancer in the United States.
The study analysed genotypic data from more than 40,000 patients and controls from Iceland, the Netherlands and eight other European countries. The research paper, entitled ‘Sequence variant on 8q24 confers susceptibility to urinary bladder cancer,’ appeared Monday in the online edition of Nature Genetics at www.nature.com/ng.
“In all cancers, the ability to identify individuals at high risk, screening them intensively and intervening early, is the key to improving prevention and outcomes,” said Kari Stefansson, CEO of deCODE. “We expect that the detection of these and other risk variants will soon be employed to complement the assessment of standard risk factors for bladder cancer.”
A more detailed analysis of the findings is available at www.decodeyou.com.
IceNews takes no responsibility for the content of external websites.
