Kristina M Jordahl, Amanda I Phipps, Timothy W Randolph, Lesley F Tinker, Rami Nassir, Lifang Hou, Garnet L Anderson, Karl T Kelsey, Emily White, Parveen Bhatti
BACKGROUND: Though bladder cancer has been the subject of many well-powered genome-wide association studies, the mechanisms involving bladder-cancer-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) remain largely unknown. This study focuses on rs798766, rs401681, rs2294008, and rs8102137, which have been associated with bladder cancer and are also cis-acting methylation quantitative loci (mQTL). METHODS: Among 412 bladder cancer cases and 424 controls from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), we assessed whether the effects of these SNPs on bladder cancer are mediated through proximal DNA methylation changes in pre-diagnostic blood at mQTL-associated CpG sites, which we refer to as natural indirect effects (NIEs)...
November 19, 2020: BMC Medical Genetics