Increased understanding of genetic risk variants in chronic lymphocytic leukemia
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Richard Rosenquist and Larry Mansouri from the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology have together with other researchers in a recent study identified novel DNA variants that can be associated with the risk of the developing chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The findings provide further insight into the genetic basis of this incurable form of leukemia.
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is the most common hematological malignancy in Western countries. Using DNA analysis techniques developed in recent years, researchers have so far been able to identify 24 different genetic variants that contribute to an increased risk to develop CLL.
In a recent study published in Nature Genetics, the scientists have expanded the DNA analyses and thereby been able to discover four novel DNA variants that can be linked to genetic susceptibility in CLL. The results were verified in a Swedish sample collection of CLL patients. Richard Rosenquist and Larry Mansouri have been involved in the collection of the Swedish material and contributed to the data analysis.
– Our results show that there are several low-risk DNA variants that contribute to the development of CLL. It is likely that there are a large number of such common variants that are still unknown. In addition, it would be interesting to study how these variations are distributed in different disease subgroups, Richard Rosenquist and Larry Mansouri say.
Richard S Houlston et al. (2013) A genome-wide association study identifies multiple susceptibility loci for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, Nature Genetics, doi:10.1038/ng.2843
Read more about the research from this group.
Kerstin Henriksson