Systematic evaluation of bladder cancer risk-associated single-nucleotide polymorphisms in a Chinese population

Recently, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified over 12 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with bladder cancer risk in populations of European descent. However, effects of these SNPs in bladder cancer have not been systemically evaluated in the Chinese population. We conducted association studies of 12 SNPs in a Chinese population of 184 cases and 962 controls. These SNPs were previously identified in European GWAS and a fine mapping study. The reported risk alleles of rs798766 on TACC3 at 4p16 and rs9624880 on MYC at 8q24 were significantly associated with increased bladder cancer risk with P-values of 0.003 and 0.03, respectively. Next, we performed a meta-analysis, by combining our study with previous association studies performed in Chinese. In the meta-analysis, the reported risk allele for four SNPs were significantly associated with increased bladder cancer risk, including rs798766 on TACC3 at 4p16, rs9624880 on MYC at 8q24, rs2294008 on PSCA at 8q24, and rs2736100 on TERT at 5p15. The meta-analysis P-values for the four SNPs ranged from 0.017 to 5.52E-05. The results from our study suggest that a sub-set of bladder cancer risk-associated SNPs identified from the European population are also associated with bladder cancer risk in the Chinese population. Additional studies with larger sample sizes are needed to further confirm our results.