Research Highlights - News Updates
Summaries of research conducted by DCEG investigators.
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Routine cervical cancer screening is very effective for preventing cervical cancer and deaths from the disease. On July 30, the American Cancer Society (ACS) published an updated guideline for cervical cancer screening. The guideline’s recommendations differ in a few ways from ACS’s prior recommendations and those of other groups. Nicolas Wentzensen, M.D., Ph.D., explains the changes in an interview on the NCI Cancer Currents blog.
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Meredith Shiels and colleagues investigated whether patterns and trends in mortality from drug poisoning, suicide and alcohol-induced deaths varied by different geographic and demographic factors in 2000-2017. The findings were published in JAMA Network Open on September 11, 2020.
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Jiaqi Huang and Demetrius Albanes in the Metabolic Epidemiology Branch analyzed the dietary intake of over 400,000 participants from the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study and found that greater intake of plant protein rather than animal protein was associated with lower overall and cardiovascular disease mortality.
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Amy Berrington and colleagues conducted a systematic bias assessment and meta-analysis of 26 studies of low dose ionizing radiation. In a JNCI monograph published July 2020, they report a dose-response and statistically significant cancer risk for solid tumors and leukemia.
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Montserrat García-Closas and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University and multiple consortia for 14 cancers showed that the utility of polygenic risk scores can vary widely depending on cancer type.
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Nicolas Wentzensen and colleagues developed a computer algorithm to improve the accuracy and efficiency of cervical cancer screening compared with cytology, the current standard for follow-up of women who test positive with primary HPV screening. The new approach has clear implications for clinical care.
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Maki Inoue-Choi and collaborators found that nondaily smoking increases risk of death from any cause, compared to both former smokers and never smokers.
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Montserrat Garcia-Closas and colleagues report findings from a new genome-wide association study (GWAS) for breast cancer identifying 32 novel susceptibility loci. Importantly, this study reveals genetic risk for breast cancer subtypes and expands the potential for the development of subtype-specific polygenic risk scores.
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Maisa Pinheiro, Julia Gage, and Lisa Mirabello in the Clinical Genetics Branch find African American women have more HPV 35 infections and HPV 35-associated cervical precancers than women of other races/ethnicities. Genomic analysis also revealed an association with the HPV 35 A2 sublineage and precancer/cancer in women of African ancestry. The highly-effective HPV vaccine covers seven oncogenic HPV types, but does not currently include HPV 35, therefore results from this study warrant further investigation on whether the addition of HPV 35 could provide better protection against cervical precancer for women in Africa or of African ancestry.
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In a study of 11,573 HPV-positive women, Maria Demarco, Ph.D., M.P.H., et al., found HPV type and persistence are the major predictors of progression to cervical precancer. At a minimum, HPV16 is clinically important, and dividing the other HPV types into three risk-groups is worth considering. These findings were published in the journal EClinicalMedicine on April 24, 2020.
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Genomic studies, serology assay valuation, descriptive epidemiology studies, and other activities of DCEG investigators and staff in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Britton Trabert and collaborators find an association between circulating progesterone and increased breast cancer risk among postmenopausal women.
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A new study identified 85 genomic loci associated with cutaneous melanoma risk using an integrative approach based on genome-wide association studies and transcriptome association approaches. These findings were published in Nature Genetics on April 27, 2020.
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Katherine McGlynn and Christian Abnet in the Metabolic Epidemiology Branch, in collaboration with the International Agency for Research on Cancer, examined the global burden of the five major types of gastrointestinal cancer, which include those of the stomach, liver, esophagus, pancreas, and colorectum.
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Pedro Saint-Maurice, Ph.D., Charles Matthews, Ph.D., and collaborators find taking more steps daily improves life expectancy.
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Meredith Yeager, in the Cancer Genomics Research Laboratory, in collaboration with researchers in the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, conducted a genetic study to determine how different African groups contributed to the genetic structure of Caribbean, as well as, North, Central, and South American populations.
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Lisa Mirabello, Ph.D., senior investigator and Sharon Savage, M.D., branch chief, in the Clinical Genetics Branch, conducted a next-generation exome sequencing study of patients with osteosarcoma and found that 28% of patients carried a rare pathogenic or likely pathogenic germline variant in a cancer-susceptibility gene.
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Genetic variants in HLA-DPB1 are associated with increased risk of severe aplastic anemia and may offer etiologic insights, according to findings in The American Journal of Human Genetics on February 6, 2020.
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Steven C. Moore, Ph.D., M.P.H., has built a multidisciplinary research program in the Metabolic Epidemiology Branch focused on understanding the contributions of physical activity, obesity, and diet to human cancer and overall health.
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DCEG scientists use data from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink to investigate risk factors and exposures that may contribute to cancer risk, ranging from medication usage to genetic cancer predisposition.