A consortium of cancer researchers has identified four chromosome locations with genetic changes that are likely to alter a womans risk of developing ovarian cancer.
The findings appear in Nature Genetics in an article authored by a Mayo Clinic researcher.
Researchers say that while more needs to be learned about the function of the specific chromosomal regions involved in susceptibility, the discoveries move them a major step closer to individualized risk assessments for ovarian cancer. In the future, women at greatest risk due to these and other inherited changes may be offered increased surveillance or preventive measures.
In searching the genome, we came up with some surprises on chromosomes 2, 3, and 17, says Ellen Goode, Ph.D., Mayo Clinic genetic epidemiologist and lead author. While examining the usual suspects in a region on chromosome 8, we found that SNPs associated with ovarian cancer risk were located quite a distance away from those associated with risk of other cancers, which suggest that they may act through a different mechanism.
SNPs, single nucleotide polymorphisms, are common genetic variants associated, in this case, with cancer risk.
Ovarian cancer symptoms are often unclear. Women and their doctors often blame the symptoms on other, more common conditions. By the time the cancer is diagnosed, the tumor has often spread beyond the ovaries.
Ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cancer among women, and it causes more deaths than any other type of female reproductive cancer. Older women are at highest risk. About two-thirds of the deaths from ovarian cancer occur in women age 55 and older. About 25% of ovarian cancer deaths occur in women ages 35 - 54.
