8q24 sequence variants in relation to prostate cancer risk among men of African descent: A case-control study

Background: Human chromosome 8q24 has been implicated in prostate tumorigenesis. Methods: Consequently, we evaluated seven 8q24 sequence variants relative to prostate cancer (PCA) in a case-control study involving men of African descent. Genetic alterations were detected in germ-line DNA from 195 incident PCA cases and 531 controls using TaqMan polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Results: Inheritance of the 8q24 rs16901979 T allele corresponded to a 2.5-fold increase in the risk of developing PCA for our test group. These findings were validated using multifactor dimensionality reduction (MDR) and permutation testing (p = 0.038). The remaining 8q24 targets were not significantly related to PCA outcomes. Conclusions: Although compelling evidence suggests that the 8q24 rs16901979 locus may serve as an effective PCA predictor, our findings require additional evaluation in larger studies.