Why African-American Men Maybe More at Risk of Developing Prostate Cancer

Hi everyone at Cancer Commentary! This is Elaine Warburton from Genetics and Health and I’ve been invited by Gloria to guest blog on your site, which is a great honor for me!

Increasingly scientific studies are highlighting the need to keep ancestry in mind when looking at diseases with a genetic component, such as cancer. Humans vary significantly in their genetic ancestry and their predisposition to disease. For example, the prevalence of certain cancers is greater in some cultures than others. This can be seen in the Ashkenazy Jewish population where parts of the BRCA breast cancer gene are carried by a much larger proportion of women than outside this culture.

A recently published study from the University of Chicago Medical Center and Translational Genomics Research Institute, Phoenix, Arizona, looked at reasons why African-American men were more at risk of developing prostate cancer than European American men.

Two tiny genetic variations on one region of chromosome 8 appear to increase prostate cancer risk in both Caucasians and men of African Heritage. However, an additional genetic marker known as rs7008482 was even more strongly associated with prostate cancer in African-Americans. The variation is located within a gene that plays a role in DNA repair. A malfunction in DNA repair could contribute to cancer development.

According to the American Cancer Society, prostate cancer affects 220,000 in the USA in 2007 and claim the lives of over 27,000 and African American are disproportionately affected and exhibit the highest rates of cancer worldwide. To develop a test for this genetic variation may allow carriers to be offered earlier screening programs.

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Elaine Warburton BSc RN ACA