Nonadditive Effects of Common Genetic Variants Have a Negligent Contribution to Cancer Heritability

Overview

Journal Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev

Specialties Biochemistry
Oncology
Public Health

Date 2024 Jul 17

PMID 39018351

Authors

Austin Hammermeister Suger

Tabitha A Harrison

Barbara Henning

Constance Turman

Peter Kraft

Sara Lindstrom

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: Contribution of dominance effects to cancer heritability is unknown. We leveraged existing genome-wide association data for seven cancers to estimate the contribution of dominance effects to the heritability of individual cancer types.

Methods: We estimated the proportion of phenotypic variation caused by dominance genetic effects using genome-wide association data for seven cancers (breast, colorectal, lung, melanoma, nonmelanoma skin, ovarian, and prostate) in a total of 166,772 cases and 284,824 controls.

Results: We observed no evidence of a meaningful contribution of dominance effects to cancer heritability. By contrast, additive effects ranged between 0.11 and 0.34.

Conclusions: In line with studies of other human traits, the dominance effects of common genetic variants play a minimal role in cancer etiology.

Impact: These results support the assumption of an additive inheritance model when conducting cancer association studies with common genetic variants.

References

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