Researchers involved in a vast, international study of potential genetic cancer markers have found risk markers for breast, ovarian and prostate cancer before, but this new analysis doubles the known list of markers, one expert says.
The international research program involved more than 130 institutions in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere, and resulted in 13 reports in Nature Genetics, PLOS Genetics and other journals. The scientists used DNA scans of more than 200,000 people to find the markers 49 risk markers for breast cancer, 26 for prostate cancer and eight for ovarian cancer.
Individually, each marker has only a small impact but they can add up. For breast cancer, for example, by combining this new research with existing science, researchers should be able to identify 5 percent of the population with twice the average risk of disease, and 1 percent with a three-fold risk.
But obviously there is no practical application of these findings for screening large populations for cancer risk. These findings are useful only for research scientists at this point noted ACSH s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. Further, while possibly detecting a man s increased risk of prostate cancer, there is no indication that the nature of the growth whether indolent or lethal will be elucidated by such genetic markers.