Malignant melanoma, the form of skin cancer that affects your wellness the most seriously, has been linked to the same gene that has already been associated with weight gain and obesity. This is according to a team of international researchers who set out to determine whether changes in one base of DNA called single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were present more frequently in people with melanoma.
For the case-control study, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Genetics, the investigators examined the genomes of 1353 people whose wellbeing had been affected by melanoma (the cases) and the genomes of 3566 healthy individuals (the controls). They then replicated their study in 12,314 people with melanoma and 55,667 people without melanoma from Europe, Australia and the US who had European ancestry, in order to see if they could replicate their findings.
The SNP that the scientists identified was located in a region of the FTO gene that was found to be associated with obesity, and so the researchers adjusted the results for BMI, to see if the association still existed. They also wanted to rule out the possibility that obesity, and not other FTO gene variants, contributes towards the development of melanoma.
The researchers were able to identify three SNPS in the FTO gene that were significantly associated with melanoma, one of which, if you have it, was found to raise your risk of melanoma by 32%. This was found in the both participants with and without melanoma already. However, though SNPs in a different part of the FTO gene have been associated with obesity, when the researchers adjusted for BMI, the association between the SNP and melanoma remained the same. This means that there was no significant association between rs16953002 SNP they found and BMI.
The researchers concluded that they have found new region of the genome that is associated with an increased risk of melanoma, but as the variations identified in this study were in a different region of the gene and were not associated with BMI, this suggests that FTO could have a wider function than initially thought. Also, whilst this type of study is good for highlighting a link between melanoma and certain SNPs and other variants of DNA, it’s important to remember that it cannot prove that these variations cause an increased risk of developing melanoma.
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