Cancer incidence in eastern Morocco: cancer patterns and incidence trends, 2005–2012

Abstract Background Cancer is one of the major health problems worldwide. In this article, we present for the first time the cancer incidence trends, the distribution and the socioeconomic profile of incident cancer cases in Eastern Morocco over a period of eight years. Methods Retrospective descriptive study of patients diagnosed with cancer at the Hassan II Regional Oncology Center (ROC) since it was created in October 2005 until December 2012. During the study period, the ROC was the only hospital specialized in cancer care in Eastern Morocco. Results A total of 7872 incident cases of cancer were registered in Eastern Morocco. Among these incident cases 5220 cases were women and 2652 were men, with a female to male ratio of 1.97. The mean age at diagnosis was 58 years for males and 52 for females and 94% of the patients aged over 30 years. For both sexes combined and for all cancer sites, breast cancer was the commonest followed by cervix uteri, colon-rectum, lung, nasopharynx, and stomach cancers. The most common cancer in women was breast cancer, followed respectively by cervix uteri cancer, colon-rectum cancer, ovary cancer, and stomach cancer. In men, the lung cancer ranked first, followed respectively by colon-rectum cancer, nasopharynx cancer, prostate cancer, and stomach cancer. For most cancers, crude incidence rates (CR) have increased significantly. The CR for all cancers combined has increased from 56.6 to 80.3 per 100,000 females and from 32.3 to 42.6 per 100,000 males during the study period. Patients profile analysis showed that 79% of cancer patients were from urban areas, 83% were unemployed and 85% had no health insurance. Conclusions The distribution of cancers in Eastern Morocco is different from those observed in other regions of Morocco. Unlike most countries, women were much more affected with cancer than men in Eastern Morocco. More importantly, the rates of many cancers are rising. Therefore, our data justify the need to develop effective programs for cancer control and prevention in Eastern Morocco. A better access to cancer care should be a priority of the health policies, given that the majority of cancer patients in Eastern Morocco are unemployed, and do not have medical care coverage

Recessive TBC1D24 Mutations Are Frequent in Moroccan Non-Syndromic Hearing Loss Pedigrees.

Mutations in the TBC1D24 gene are responsible for four neurological presentations: infantile epileptic encephalopathy, infantile myoclonic epilepsy, DOORS (deafness, onychodystrophy, osteodystrophy, mental retardation and seizures) and NSHL (non-syndromic hearing loss). For the latter, two recessive (DFNB86) and one dominant (DFNA65) mutations have so far been identified in consanguineous Pakistani and European/Chinese families, respectively. Here we report the results of a genetic study performed on a large Moroccan cohort of deaf patients that identified three families with compound heterozygote mutations in TBC1D24. Four novel mutations were identified, among which, one c.641G>A (p.Arg214His) was present in the three families, and has a frequency of 2% in control Moroccan population with normal hearing, suggesting that it acts as an hypomorphic variant leading to restricted deafness when combined with another recessive severe mutation. Altogether, our results show that mutations in TBC1D24 gene are a frequent cause (>2%) of NSHL in Morocco, and that due to its possible compound heterozygote recessive transmission, this gene should be further considered and screened in other deaf cohorts

Novel compound heterozygous MYO7A mutations in Moroccan families with autosomal recessive non-syndromic hearing loss.

The MYO7A gene encodes a protein belonging to the unconventional myosin super family. Mutations within MYO7A can lead to either non syndromic hearing loss or to the Usher syndrome type 1B (USH1B). Here, we report the results of genetic analyses performed on Moroccan families with autosomal recessive non syndromic hearing loss that identified two families with compound heterozygous MYO7A mutations. Five mutations (c.6025delG, c.6229T>A, c.3500T>A, c.5617C>T and c.4487C>A) were identified in these families, the latter presenting two differently affected branches. Multiple bioinformatics programs and molecular modelling predicted the pathogenic effect of these mutations. In conclusion, the absence of vestibular and retinal symptom in the affected patients suggests that these families have the isolated non-syndromic hearing loss DFNB2 (nonsyndromic autosomal recessive hearing loss) presentation, instead of USH1B

Additional file 1: of Distribution and features of hematological malignancies in Eastern Morocco: a retrospective multicenter study over 5Â years

Includes two tables: (Table S1) showing the distribution and male to female ratio of hematological malignancies by age group in Eastern Morocco for the study period, and (Table S2) showing the Age-group specific distribution of hematological malignancies in Eastern Morocco, 2008-2012. (PDF 32 kb

Novel Mutation in AIFM1 Gene Associated with X-Linked Deafness in a Moroccan Family

International audienceIntroduction: Auditory neuropathy is a hearing disorder where outer hair cell function within the cochlea is normal, but inner hair cell and/or the auditory nerve function is disrupted. It is a heterogeneous disorder, which can have either congenital or acquired causes.Methods: We found a disease-segregating mutation in the X-linked AIFM1 gene through whole-exome sequencing, encoding the apoptosis-inducing factor mitochondrion-associated 1.Results: The impact of the c.1045A>G; p.(Ser349Gly) mutation on the AIFM1 protein was predicted using different bioinformatics tools. The pedigree analysis in the examined family was consistent with X-linked dominant inheritance.Discussion/conclusion: To our knowledge, this is the first study that identifies a mutation in the AIFM1 gene in Moroccan patients suffering from X-linked auditory neuropath

Association analysis of IGF2BP2, KCNJ11, and CDKAL1 polymorphisms with type 2 diabetes mellitus in a Moroccan population: a case-control study and meta-analysis.

International audienceAssociations with type 2 diabetes mellitus have been identified for variants CDKAL1 rs7756992, KCNJ11 rs5219, and IGF2BP2 rs4402960 in different populations. In a case-control study of 250 unrelated Moroccan diabetic patients and 250 healthy controls, we used TaqMan allelic discrimination assays to genotype the three SNPs and meta-analysis to investigate the association between the polymorphisms and diabetes in Arab populations. The results showed a significant diabetes association only with the variant rs4402960 of the IGF2BP2 gene under additive 2 (GG vs. TT; p = 0.009) and recessive (TT vs. GG+GT; p = 0.003) models. Meta-analysis indicated significant association between the IGF2BP2 rs4402960 and CDKAL1 rs7756992 polymorphisms and increased risk of diabetes in Arab populations. According to our results, the case-control study and meta-analysis revealed a significant association between the IGF2BP2 rs4402960 variant and type 2 diabetes in Moroccan and Arab populations

Schematic representation of the mutations responsible for non-syndromic hearing loss, in the TBC1D24 protein.

<p>The TDC and TLBc functional domains are represented on the TBC1D24 protein structure. The amino-acid changes identified in this work (in bold) and the published recessive and dominant mutations responsible for NHSL are shown on the top, while mutations responsible for DOORS syndrome, familial infantile myoclonic epilepsy, progressive myoclonus epilepsy and early-infantile epileptic encephalopathy-16 are shown below the protein structure.</p

Mutations in <i>TBC1D24</i> segregate with non-syndromic hearing loss.

<p>(A) Pedigrees of the two families are shown with the segregation of the mutations identified in <i>TBC1D24</i>. (B) Electrophoregrams showing the 4 heterozygote mutations identified in this work. C) Alignments of TBC1D24 sequences around the 4 mutated amino acids highlighted by red rectangles (<i>H</i>.<i>s</i>.: <i>Homo sapiens</i>; <i>M</i>.<i>m</i>.: <i>Mus musculus</i>; <i>G</i>.<i>g</i>.: <i>Gallus gallus</i>; X.l.: <i>Xenopus laevis</i>; D.r.: <i>Danio rerio</i>).</p

Characteristics of the novel mutations identified in <i>TBC1D24</i> gene.

<p>For each mutation, its position in the cDNA is given, as well as the amino-acid change, its reference number in NCBI database (rs ID), its frequency in NCBI and Exome Variant Server (EVS) database, and the predicted Sift, Polyphen-2 and Mutation Taster scores.</p><p>Characteristics of the novel mutations identified in <i>TBC1D24</i> gene.</p