Linkage of a nasopharyngeal carcinoma susceptibility locus to the HLA region.
The frequency of nasopharyngeal carcinoma is nearly 100-fold higher in southern Chinese than in most European populations. Earlier studies have suggested that an increased risk of nasopharyngeal carcinoma is associated with specific haplotypes in the HLA region: relative risks slightly over twofold were found for haplotypes A2, Bw46 and the antigen B17. We now report a linkage study based on affected sib pairs which suggests that a gene closely linked to the HLA locus confers a greatly increased risk of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. The maximum likelihood estimate is of a relative risk of approximately 21. The relationship between this suspected disease susceptibility gene (or genes) and known viral and environmental aetiological factors remains to be elucidated.
Lu
S J
SJ
People's Regional Hospital, Nanning, People's Republic of China.
Day
N E
NE
Degos
L
L
Lepage
V
V
Wang
P C
PC
Chan
S H
SH
Simons
M
M
McKnight
B
B
Easton
D
D
Zeng
Y
Y
D002681:China; D008040:Genetic Linkage; D006680:HLA Antigens / Q000235:genetics*; D015789:HLA-A2 Antigen / Q000235:genetics; D015235:HLA-B Antigens / Q000235:genetics; D006684:HLA-DR Antigens / Q000235:genetics; D006239:Haplotypes; D006801:Humans; D008126:Lod Score; D009303:Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics* / Q000276:immunology; D012307:Risk Factors
D006680:HLA Antigens; D015789:HLA-A2 Antigen; D015235:HLA-B Antigens; C037449:HLA-B17 antigen; C080311:HLA-B46 antigen; D006684:HLA-DR Antigens