A large DNA analysis of people with and without pancreatic cancer pinpointed new genetic markers that increase one's risk of developing the disease.
The markers are variations in inherited DNA codes at specific locations along chromosomes, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute reported. A number of these codes were found to influence pancreatic cancer risk. The findings were published in a recent edition of Nature Genetics.
The findings could help explain why some people or molecularly less prone to pancreatic cancer than others. The research could also help identify people who are at a greater risk and could benefit from an MRI screening.
"Currently there is no population screening program for pancreatic cancer, which in 80 percent of cases is discovered when it's too late to allow curative surgery - the cancer has already spread," said Brian Wolpin, MD, MPH, first author of the report.
The only healthy individuals who are currently screened for pancreatic cancer are members of high-risk families in which multiple members have developed the dangerous condition.
"But the field has been struggling to find factors that can identify people at highest risk in the general population, when a strong family history is not present," Wolpin said.
To make their findings the researchers looked at 7,683 patients with pancreatic cancer and 14,397 control patients without it; all of which were of European descent. The team conducted a genome-wide study on these patients, including 700,000 sites of the genome known to have single nucleotide polymorphisms (differed versions of a letter of DNA code). The results confirmed the existence of four risk-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that had been identified in a previous study. It also identified five new risk markers as well as a sixth that was borderline statistically significant. These findings could help identify which patients could benefit from early pancreatic cancer screening.
