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Updated: Feb 25, 2026

Microarray-based Identification of Individual HERV Loci Expression: Application to Biomarker Discovery in Prostate Cancer
Published on: November 2, 2013
Height, selected genetic markers and prostate cancer risk: results from the PRACTICAL consortium
Artitaya Lophatananon1,2, Sarah Stewart-Brown1, Zsofia Kote-Jarai3
1Centre of Epidemiology, Division of Population Health, Health Services Research and Primary Care, School of Health Sciences, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
Background:
Evidence on height and prostate cancer risk is mixed, however, recent studies with large data sets support a possible role for its association with the risk of aggressive prostate cancer.
Methods:
We analysed data from the PRACTICAL consortium consisting of 6207 prostate cancer cases and 6016 controls and a subset of high grade cases (2480 cases). We explored height, polymorphisms in genes related to growth processes as main effects and their possible interactions.
Results:
The results suggest that height is associated with high-grade prostate cancer risk. Men with height >180 cm are at a 22% increased risk as compared to men with height <173 cm (OR 1.22, 95% CI 1.01-1.48). Genetic variants in the growth pathway gene showed an association with prostate cancer risk. The aggregate scores of the selected variants identified a significantly increased risk of overall prostate cancer and high-grade prostate cancer by 13% and 15%, respectively, in the highest score group as compared to lowest score group.
Conclusions:
There was no evidence of gene-environment interaction between height and the selected candidate SNPs.Our findings suggest a role of height in high-grade prostate cancer. The effect of genetic variants in the genes related to growth is seen in all cases and high-grade prostate cancer. There is no interaction between these two exposures.
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