Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 May 31;10(22):eadk3121.
doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adk3121. Epub 2024 May 29.

Two genome-wide interaction loci modify the association of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs with colorectal cancer

David A Drew  1   2 Andre E Kim  3 Yi Lin  4 Conghui Qu  4 John Morrison  3 Juan Pablo Lewinger  3 Eric Kawaguchi  3 Jun Wang  5 Yubo Fu  3 Natalia Zemlianskaia  3 Virginia Díez-Obrero  6   7   8 Stephanie A Bien  4 Niki Dimou  9 Demetrius Albanes  10 James W Baurley  11   12 Anna H Wu  5 Daniel D Buchanan  13   14   15 John D Potter  4   16 Ross L Prentice  4 Sophia Harlid  17 Volker Arndt  18 Elizabeth L Barry  19 Sonja I Berndt  10 Emmanouil Bouras  20 Hermann Brenner  18   21   22 Arif Budiarto  11 Andrea Burnett-Hartman  23 Peter T Campbell  24 Robert Carreras-Torres  6   25 Graham Casey  26 Jenny Chang-Claude  27   28 David V Conti  3 Matthew A M Devall  29 Jane C Figueiredo  3   30 Stephen B Gruber  31   32 Andrea Gsur  33 Marc J Gunter  9   34 Tabitha A Harrison  4 Akihisa Hidaka  4 Michael Hoffmeister  18 Jeroen R Huyghe  4 Mark A Jenkins  35 Kristina M Jordahl  4   36 Anshul Kundaje  37   38 Loic Le Marchand  39 Li Li  29   40 Brigid M Lynch  35   41 Neil Murphy  9 Rami Nassir  42 Polly A Newcomb  4   43 Christina C Newton  44 Mireia Obón-Santacana  6   45   46 Shuji Ogino  47   48   49   50 Jennifer Ose  51   52 Rish K Pai  53 Julie R Palmer  54 Nikos Papadimitriou  9 Bens Pardamean  11 Andrew J Pellatt  55 Anita R Peoples  51   52 Elizabeth A Platz  56 Gad Rennert  57   58   59 Edward Ruiz-Narvaez  60 Lori C Sakoda  4   61 Peter C Scacheri  62 Stephanie L Schmit  63   64 Robert E Schoen  65 Mariana C Stern  5 Yu-Ru Su  66 Duncan C Thomas  3 Yu Tian  27   67 Konstantinos K Tsilidis  34   68 Cornelia M Ulrich  51   52 Caroline Y Um  44 Fränzel J B van Duijnhoven  69 Bethany Van Guelpen  17   70 Emily White  4   36 Li Hsu  4   71 Victor Moreno  6   45   46   72 Ulrike Peters  4   36 Andrew T Chan  1   2 W James Gauderman  3
Affiliations

Two genome-wide interaction loci modify the association of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs with colorectal cancer

David A Drew et al. Sci Adv. .

Abstract

Regular, long-term aspirin use may act synergistically with genetic variants, particularly those in mechanistically relevant pathways, to confer a protective effect on colorectal cancer (CRC) risk. We leveraged pooled data from 52 clinical trial, cohort, and case-control studies that included 30,806 CRC cases and 41,861 controls of European ancestry to conduct a genome-wide interaction scan between regular aspirin/nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) use and imputed genetic variants. After adjusting for multiple comparisons, we identified statistically significant interactions between regular aspirin/NSAID use and variants in 6q24.1 (top hit rs72833769), which has evidence of influencing expression of TBC1D7 (a subunit of the TSC1-TSC2 complex, a key regulator of MTOR activity), and variants in 5p13.1 (top hit rs350047), which is associated with expression of PTGER4 (codes a cell surface receptor directly involved in the mode of action of aspirin). Genetic variants with functional impact may modulate the chemopreventive effect of regular aspirin use, and our study identifies putative previously unidentified targets for additional mechanistic interrogation.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.. Association of regular aspirin/NSAID use with CRC according to sex and tumor location.
Results from meta-analysis of association between regular use of (A) aspirin/NSAID or (B) aspirin-only and colorectal cancer, overall and stratified by sex and tumor site. Models adjusted for age and sex. Heterogeneity measures include Cochran’s Q statistic p-value (Phet) and Higgin’s statistic (I2), which describes the proportion of observed variance due to heterogeneity and not attributed to sampling error.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.. Manhattan plots of genome-wide interaction scans.
(A) traditional logistic regression interaction test (1-df) for aspirin/NSAID (B) traditional logistic regression interaction test (1-df) for aspirin-only, (C) 3-df joint test for aspirin/NSAID, and (D) 3-df joint test for aspirin-only. Red line represents a genome-wide significance threshold of 5 × 10−8/2.5 after adjustment for multiple testing.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.. Forest plots of GxE interactions for identified SNPs and aspirin/NSAID and risk of CRC stratified by tumor molecular subtypes.
ORs (dots) and 95% CIs (error bars) are plotted for each case stratified by the presence (BRAF mutant; CIMP-high; MSI-high; KRAS mutant) or absence (BRAF wild type; CIMP-low/negative; Non-MSI-high; KRAS wild type) of the marker in cases versus controls (referent) for each identified SNP: (A) rs72833769 and (B) rs350047. The P value for heterogeneity (Phet) between estimates for cases with the molecular marker present versus absent and the overall association of the interaction for cases with molecular marker data versus controls is also provided.

References

    1. Qiao Y., Yang T., Gan Y., Li W., Wang C., Gong Y., Lu Z., Associations between aspirin use and the risk of cancers: A meta-analysis of observational studies. BMC Cancer 18, 288 (2018). - PMC - PubMed
    1. Friis S., Riis A. H., Erichsen R., Baron J. A., Sorensen H. T., Low-dose aspirin or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug use and colorectal cancer risk: A population-based, case-control study. Ann. Intern. Med. 163, 347–355 (2015). - PubMed
    1. Drew D. A., Cao Y., Chan A. T., Aspirin and colorectal cancer: The promise of precision chemoprevention. Nat. Rev. Cancer 16, 173–186 (2016). - PMC - PubMed
    1. Burn J., Sheth H., Elliott F., Reed L., Macrae F., Mecklin J. P., Moslein G., McRonald F. E., Bertario L., Evans D. G., Gerdes A. M., Ho J. W. C., Lindblom A., Morrison P. J., Rashbass J., Ramesar R., Seppala T., Thomas H. J. W., Pylvanainen K., Borthwick G. M., Mathers J. C., Bishop D. T., Investigators C., Cancer prevention with aspirin in hereditary colorectal cancer (Lynch syndrome), 10-year follow-up and registry-based 20-year data in the CAPP2 study: A double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial. Lancet 395, 1855–1863 (2020). - PMC - PubMed
    1. Cook N. R., Lee I. M., Zhang S. M., Moorthy M. V., Buring J. E., Alternate-day, low-dose aspirin and cancer risk: Long-term observational follow-up of a randomized trial. Ann. Intern. Med. 159, 77–85 (2013). - PMC - PubMed

Substances

Grants and funding