Genome-wide association study identifies five new susceptibility loci for prostate cancer in the Japanese population

Prostate cancer is one of the most common malignancies in males throughout the world1, and its incidence is increasing in Asian countries. We carried out a genome-wide association study and replication study using 4,584 Japanese men with prostate cancer and 8,801 control subjects. From the thirty-one associated SNPs reported in previous genome-wide association studies in European populations, we confirmed the association of nine SNPs at P < 1.0 x 10-⁷ and ten SNPs at P < 0.05 in the Japanese population. The remaining 12 SNPs showed no association (P > 0.05). In addition, we report here five new loci for prostate cancer susceptibility, at 5p15 (λ -corrected probability P_GC = 3.9 x 10-¹⁸), GPRC6A/RFX6 (P_GC = 1.6 x 10-12), 13q22 (P_GC = 2.8 x 10-⁹), C2orf43 (P_GC = 7.5 x 10-⁸) and FOXP4 (P_GC = 7.6 x 10-⁸). These findings advance our understanding of the genetic basis of prostate carcinogenesis and also highlight the genetic heterogeneity of prostate cancer susceptibility among different ethnic populations.