A meta-analysis of 87,040 individuals identifies 23 new susceptibility loci for prostate cancer

Nature Genetics

(2014)

doi:10.1038/ng.3094

Received: 26 March 2014
Accepted: 19 August 2014
Published online: 14 September 2014

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified 76 variants associated with prostate cancer risk predominantly in populations of European ancestry. To identify additional susceptibility loci for this common cancer, we conducted a meta-analysis of >10 million SNPs in 43,303 prostate cancer cases and 43,737 controls from studies in populations of European, African, Japanese and Latino ancestry. Twenty-three new susceptibility loci were identified at associationP < 5 × 10⁻⁸; 15 variants were identified among men of European ancestry, 7 were identified in multi-ancestry analyses and 1 was associated with early-onset prostate cancer. These 23 variants, in combination with known prostate cancer risk variants, explain 33% of the familial risk for this disease in European-ancestry populations. These findings provide new regions for investigation into the pathogenesis of prostate cancer and demonstrate the usefulness of combining ancestrally diverse populations to discover risk loci for disease.