Gene marker signals higher prostate risk

NEW YORK – Scientists have identified a common genetic marker that signals a 60 percent heightened risk of prostate cancer in men who carry it, and it may help explain why black men are unusually prone to the disease, a new study says.

The DNA variant may play a role in about 8 percent of prostate cancers in men of European extraction and 16 percent of the cancers in blacks, researchers said.

The study was posted online Sunday by Nature Genetics and will appear in the journal’s June issue. The work is reported by Kari Stefansson and colleagues at deCode genetics in Reykjavik, Iceland, and scientists elsewhere.

The variant is about twice as common in blacks as whites, so that may contribute to the higher incidence of prostate cancer in blacks, the researchers said.

Stefansson said that deCode plans to use the discovery to develop a genetic test that might help doctors decide how closely to follow men at high risk and how to treat prostate cancer cases. The study indicated the variant might be associated with more aggressive forms of the disease.