Linkage of a nasopharyngeal carcinoma susceptibility locus to the HLA region |
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Authors: | S J Lu N E Day L Degos V Lepage P C Wang S H Chan M Simons B McKnight D Easton Y Zeng |
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Affiliation: | People's Regional Hospital, Nanning, People's Republic of China. |
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Abstract: | The frequency of nasopharyngeal carcinoma is nearly 100-fold higher in southern Chinese than in most European populations. Earlier studies have suggested that an increased risk of nasopharyngeal carcinoma is associated with specific haplotypes in the HLA region: relative risks slightly over twofold were found for haplotypes A2, Bw46 and the antigen B17. We now report a linkage study based on affected sib pairs which suggests that a gene closely linked to the HLA locus confers a greatly increased risk of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. The maximum likelihood estimate is of a relative risk of approximately 21. The relationship between this suspected disease susceptibility gene (or genes) and known viral and environmental aetiological factors remains to be elucidated. |
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