Familial Aggregation of Glioma: A Pooled Analysis

In genome-wide association studies, inherited risk of glioma has been demonstrated for rare familial syndromes and with common variants from 3-5 chromosomal regions. To assess the degree of familial aggregation of glioma, the authors performed a pooled analysis of data from 2 large glioma case-control studies in the United States (MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas (1994-2006) and University of California, San Francisco (1991-2004)) and from the Swedish Cancer Registry (1958-2006) to measure excess cases of cancer among first-degree relatives of glioma probands. This analysis included 20,377 probands with glioma and 52,714 first-degree relatives. No overall increase was found in the expected number of cancers among family members; however, there were 77% more gliomas than expected. There were also significantly more sarcoma and melanoma cases than expected, which is supported by evidence in the literature, whereas there were significantly fewer-than-expected cases of leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and bladder, lung, pancreatic, prostate, and uterine cancers. This large pooled analysis provided sufficient numbers of related family members to examine the genetic mechanisms involved in the aggregation of glioma with other cancers in these families. However, misclassification due to unvalidated cancers among family members could account for the differences seen by study site.