A fat-cell gene linked to colon and breast-cancer development now is linked to prostate cancer in overweight people in a new study by Boris Pasche, M.D., professor of medicine and director of the Hematology/Oncology Division at UAB and deputy director of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Pasche, a senior author on the study, says everyone has the adiponectin gene, but some have a variant linked to a 40 percent increase in the chances of developing prostate cancer. Pasche says that, if duplicated, the findings, published in the March online edition of the journal Metabolism – Clinical and Experimental, could be used for risk-identification testing.
“We want to be cautious because it is just one study, but it is exciting,” Pasche says.
Investigators in the UAB School of Public Health provided the statistical analysis for this study.