Prostate cancer risk variants are not associated with disease progression.

BACKGROUND

Currently used prognostic markers are limited in their ability to accurately predict disease progression among patients with localized prostate cancer. We examined 23 reported prostate cancer susceptibility variants for association with disease progression.

METHODS

Disease progression was explored among 4,673 Swedish patients treated for clinically localized prostate cancer between 1997 and 2002. Prostate cancer progression was defined according to primary treatment as a composed event reflecting termination of deferred treatment, biochemical recurrence, local progression, or presence of distant metastasis. Association between single variants, and all variants combined, were performed in Cox regression analysis assuming both log-additive and co-dominant genetic models.

RESULTS

Three of the 23 genetic variants explored were nominally associated with prostate cancer progression; rs9364554 (P = 0.041) on chromosome 6q25 and rs10896449 (P = 0.029) on chromosome 11q13 among patients treated with curative intent; and rs4054823 (P = 0.008) on chromosome 17p12 among patients on surveillance. However, none of these associations remained statistically significant after correction for multiple testing. The combined effect of all susceptibility variants was not associated with prostate cancer progression neither among patients receiving treatment with curative intent (P = 0.14) nor among patients on surveillance (P = 0.92).

CONCLUSIONS

We observed no evidence for an association between any of 23 established prostate cancer genetic risk variants and disease progression. Accumulating evidence suggests separate genetic components for initiation and progression of prostate cancer. Future studies systematically searching for genetic risk variants associated with prostate cancer progression and prognosis are warranted.