DESCRIPTION: (Adapted from Investigator's Abstract) Lung cancer is the
leading cause of cancer mortality in the United States. Ethnic differences
in lung cancer occurrence and survival are inadequately understood and may
reflect both environmental and genetic influences. Elucidating the
interplay of these factors in very high- and very low-risk populations will
be crucial in developing novel intervention and prevention strategies. This
study focuses on African-Americans who bear a disproportionate burden of
lung cancer and Latinos who have very low rates. The investigators state
that this continuation of their ecogenetics study of lung cancer in Houston,
TX, will test specific findings from the first study in a large population
of African-Americans and Latinos in Northern California and will explore
gene loci never before studied in minorities. They will collect blood
specimens and conduct in-person interviews with 350 cases from each ethnic
group, identified through the Northern California Cancer Center (NCCC) rapid
case ascertainment program, and an equal number of ethnicity-, age-, and
sex-frequency matched controls recruited through random digit dialing. They
will establish a DNA bank and estimate the prevalence of genetic
polymorphisms in a cytochrome P-450 gene (CYP1A1), two glutathione
S-transferases (GSTM1, GSTT1), the NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase (NQ01) and
two N-acetyl transferases (NAT1, NAT2), and the XRCC1 DNA repair gene. The
investigators state that previous associations of these traits with lung
cancer among Caucasians or Japanese are not readily generalizable to
minorities without the further detailed study that they propose here. Using
multiple genetic markers is a highly efficient means to simultaneously test
several hypotheses concerning genetic contributions to cancer risk. They
further state that an especially unique contribution will be laying the
foundation to understand the markedly lower rates of lung cancer among
Latino populations; they emphasize that their study represents the only
population-based study of its kind among Latinos. Furthermore, they state
that this will be only the second population-based genetic epidemiologic
study of lung cancer in African-Americans; African-American men in
California have an 11% lifetime risk of lung cancer. The further note that
the DNA bank and comprehensive questionnaire data on smoking and other
important risk factors also will prove invaluable for continuing studies of
the genetic epidemiology of lung cancer.
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- The DCCPS Team.
