Statin use and association with colorectal cancer survival and risk:Case control study with prescription data linkage

Background: In Scotland colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer and a leading cause of cancer death. Epidemiological studies have reported conflicting associations between statins and CRC risk and there is one published report of the association between statins and CRC survival.Methods: Analysis was carried out on 309 cases and 294 controls from the Scottish Study of Colorectal Cancer (SOCCS). Cox's hazard and logistic regression models were applied to investigate the association between statin use and CRC risk and survival.Results: In an adjusted logistic regression model, statins were found to show a statistically significant association for three of the four statin variables and were found to not show a statistically significant association with either all-cause or CRC-specific mortality (OR 0.49; 95%CI 0.49-1.36; p-value = 0.17 and OR 0.33; 95%CI 0.08-1.35; P-value = 0.12, respectively).Conclusion: We did find a statistically significant association between statin intake and CRC risk but not statin intake and CRC-specific mortality. However, the study was insufficiently powered and larger scale studies may be advisable.</p

Common variation near CDKN1A, POLD3 and SHROOM2 influences colorectal cancer risk

We performed a meta-analysis of five genome-wide association studies to identify common variants influencing colorectal cancer (CRC) risk comprising 8,682 cases and 9,649 controls. Replication analysis was performed in case-control sets totaling 21,096 cases and 19,555 controls. We identified three new CRC risk loci at 6p21 (rs1321311, near CDKN1A; P = 1.14 × 10(-10)), 11q13.4 (rs3824999, intronic to POLD3; P = 3.65 × 10(-10)) and Xp22.2 (rs5934683, near SHROOM2; P = 7.30 × 10(-10)) This brings the number of independent loci associated with CRC risk to 20 and provides further insight into the genetic architecture of inherited susceptibility to CRC.Swedish Research Council et al.Manuscrip

2015 Research & Innovation Day Program

A one day showcase of applied research, social innovation, scholarship projects and activities.https://first.fanshawec.ca/cri_cripublications/1002/thumbnail.jp

Identification and survival of carriers of mutations in DNA mis-match repair genes in colon cancer.

Background The identification of mutations in germ-line DNA mismatch-repair genes at the time of diagnosis of colorectal cancer is important in the management of the disease. Methods Without preselection and regardless of family history, we recruited 870 patients under the age of 55 years soon after they received a diagnosis of colorectal cancer. We studied these patients for germ-line mutations in the DNA mismatch-repair genes MLH1, MSH2, and MSH6 and developed a two-stage model by multivariate logistic regression for the prediction of the presence of mutations in these genes. Stage 1 of the model incorporated only clinical variables; stage 2 comprised analysis of the tumor by immunohistochemical staining and tests for microsatellite instability. The model was validated in an independent population of patients. We analyzed 2938 patient-years of follow-up to determine whether genotype influenced survival. Results There were 38 mutations among the 870 participants (4 percent): 15 mutations in MLH1, 16 in MSH2, and 7 in MSH6. Carrier frequencies in men (6 percent) and women (3 percent) differed significantly (