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Linkage of a nasopharyngeal carcinoma susceptibility locus to the HLA regions

Nature volume 346, pages 470–471 (1990)Cite this article

Abstract

THE frequency of nasopharyngeal carcinoma is nearly 100-fold higher in southern Chinese than in most European populations1. Earlier studies have suggested that an increased risk of nasopharyngeal carcinoma is associated with specific haplotypes in the HLA region: relative risks slightly over twofold were found for haplotypes A2, Bw46 and the antigen BIT (refs 2–4). We now report a linkage study based on affected sib pairs which suggests that a gene closely linked to the HLA locus confers a greatly increased risk of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. The maximum likelihood estimate is of a relative risk of approximately 21. The relationship between this suspected disease susceptibility gene (or genes) and known viral and environmental aetiological factors remains to be elucidated.

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Author notes

  1. Nicholas E. Day: To whom correspondence should be addressed

Authors and Affiliations

  1. People's Regional Hospital, Manning, Guangxi Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China

    Sheng-jing Lu & Pei-Chung Wang

  2. Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit, 5 Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge, CB2 2BW, UK

    Nicholas E. Day

  3. INSERM U 93, Hayem Research Center, Saint Louis Hospital, Paris, France

    Laurent Degos & Virginia Lepage

  4. Microbiology Department, National University, Singapore

    So-Ha Chan

  5. Immunogene Typing Laboratories, Immunoresearch, Melbourne, Australia

    Malcolm Simons

  6. Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 98196, USA

    Barbara McKnight

  7. Section of Epidemiology, Institute for Cancer Research, Sutton, Surrey, SM2 5NG, UK

    Douglas Easton

  8. CNRS Laboratory of Epidemiology and Immunovirology of Tumors, Faculty of Medicine Alexis Carrel, 69372, Lyon, Cedex 8, France

    Yi Zeng

  9. Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, Beijing, People's Republic of China

    Guy de-Thé

Authors
  1. Sheng-jing Lu
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  2. Nicholas E. Day
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  3. Laurent Degos
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  4. Virginia Lepage
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  5. Pei-Chung Wang
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  6. So-Ha Chan
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  7. Malcolm Simons
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  8. Barbara McKnight
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  9. Douglas Easton
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  10. Yi Zeng
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  11. Guy de-Thé
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Cite this article

Lu, Sj., Day, N., Degos, L. et al. Linkage of a nasopharyngeal carcinoma susceptibility locus to the HLA regions. Nature 346, 470–471 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1038/346470a0

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