No abstract

Full funding sources listed at the end of the paper (see Acknowledgments).

Epithelial ovarian cancer has a major heritable component, but the known susceptibility genes explain less than half the excess familial risk1. We performed a genome wide association study (GWAS) to identify common ovarian cancer susceptibility alleles. We evaluated 507,094 SNPs genotyped in 1,817 cases and 2,353 controls from the UK and ~2 million imputed SNPs. We genotyped the 22,790 top ranked SNPs in 4,274 cases and 4,809 controls of European ancestry from Europe, USA and Australia. We identified 12 SNPs at 9p22 associated with disease risk (P<10−8). The most significant SNP (rs3814113; P = 2.5 × 10−17) was genotyped in a further 2,670 ovarian cancer cases and 4,668 controls confirming its association (combined data odds ratio = 0.82 95% CI 0.79 – 0.86, P-trend = 5.1 × 10−19). The association differs by histological subtype, being strongest for serous ovarian cancers (OR 0.77 95% CI 0.73 – 0.81, Ptrend = 4.1 × 10−21).

Population Health Research Institute, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario, Canadian Institutes of Health Research Strategy for Patient Oriented Research through the Ontario SPOR Support Unit, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, pharmaceutical companies (with major contributions from AstraZeneca [Canada], Sanofi Aventis [France and Canada], Boehringer Ingelheim [Germany amd Canada], Servier, and GlaxoSmithKline), Novartis and King Pharma, and national or local organisations in participating countries.

Full funding sources listed at the end of the paper (see Acknowledgments).