Objectives: Four genome-wide association (GWA) studies have found that variation in a region of strong linkage disequilibrium on the long arm of chromosome 15 (15q24-25.1) containing nicotinic acetylcholine receptor genes contributes to lung cancer risk. Because cigarette smoking is a major risk factor for developing both lung cancer and pancreatic cancer, we hypothesized that variation in this region may also modify individual susceptibility to pancreatic cancer.
Methods: We conducted a case-control study of 523 patients with pathologically confirmed pancreatic adenocarcinoma and 1046 age-, sex-, ethnicity-, and smoking behavior-matched cancer-free controls.
Results: We found that 2 risk single nucleotide polymorphisms reported in the lung cancer GWA studies-rs8034191: A>G and rs1051730: G>A, located in this 15q24-25.1 region-were not associated with risk of pancreatic cancer.
Conclusions: The results of our study suggest that the 2 single nucleotide polymorphisms at 15q25.1 do not modify pancreatic cancer risk.