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Published on: September 7, 2013
Height, height-related SNPs, and risk of non-melanoma skin cancer
Xin Li1, Liming Liang1, Yen-Chen Anne Feng1
1Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
Background:
Adult height has been associated with risk of several site-specific cancers, including melanoma. However, less attention has been given to non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC).
Methods:
We prospectively examined the risk of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and basal cell carcinoma (BCC) in relation to adult height in the Nurses' Health Study (NHS, n=117 863) and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS, n=51 111). We also investigated the relationships between height-related genetic markers and risk of BCC and SCC in the genetic data sets of the NHS and HPFS (3898 BCC cases, and 8530 BCC controls; 527 SCC cases, and 8962 SCC controls).
Results:
After controlling for potential confounding factors, the hazard ratios were 1.09 (95% CI: 1.02, 1.15) and 1.10 (95% CI: 1.07, 1.13) for the associations between every 10 cm increase in height and risk of SCC and BCC respectively. None of the 687 height-related single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) was significantly associated with the risk of SCC or BCC, nor were the genetic scores combining independent height-related loci.
Conclusions:
Our data from two large cohorts provide further evidence that height is associated with an increased risk of NMSC. More studies on height-related genetic loci and early-life exposures may help clarify the underlying mechanisms.
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