26
Jan
<
The risk of melanoma, a disease that annually affects about 160,000 people, has been linked historically with sun exposure, however, there is increasing scientific basis points to a genetic factor of the disease.
One example is the international research project funded by the European Commission (EC), coordinated by the University of Leeds (England) and has participated in the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona, during which he has identified a third area genome directly related to the risk of melanoma, one of the most aggressive variants of skin cancer, responsible for 75% of deaths from this disease.
The latest results of the project "GenoMEL" were published in the journal Nature Genetics, and are an important step in the genetic study of the disease, providing important clues for progress
of this disease.
Until now it had located two areas of the human genome variations that represented a risk for the disease, located in the genes "Tyr" and "MCR1" having to do with skin pigmentation and sensitivity to the sun, what this new finding opens new avenues of research.
The study sought to single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)-variations in the sequence of DNA that make up nucleotides and may be associated with genetic diseases-in a large sample of people with melanoma and probable genetic susceptibility.
The work, which involved the genetic study of 1650 patients and 4336 controls in Europe and in Australia, has identified three sites of melanoma with variations represent a risk for the disease.
Two of them are part of the two genes already identified, while the third is located on chromosome 9.
Identifying these risk factors, shared by the population of Europe and Australia, represents a significant advance in biomedical research of the disease.
Leave a Reply