Saturday, September 12, 2009

Sex hormones & genes   posted by Razib @ 9/12/2009 01:16:00 PM
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Quantitative trait loci predicting circulating sex steroid hormones in men from the NCI-Breast and Prostate Cancer Cohort Consortium (BPC3):
Twin studies suggest a heritable component to circulating sex steroid hormones and sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG). In the NCI-Breast and Prostate Cancer Cohort Consortium, 874 SNPs in 37 candidate genes in the sex steroid hormone pathway were examined in relation to circulating levels of SHBG (N = 4720), testosterone (N = 4678), 3-androstanediol-glucuronide (N = 4767) and 17β-estradiol (N = 2014) in Caucasian men. rs1799941 in SHBG is highly significantly associated with circulating levels of SHBG (P = 4.52 x 10–21), consistent with previous studies, and testosterone (P = 7.54 x 10–15), with mean difference of 26.9 and 14.3%, respectively, comparing wild-type to homozygous variant carriers. Further noteworthy novel findings were observed between SNPs in ESR1 with testosterone levels (rs722208, mean difference = 8.8%, P = 7.37 x 10–6) and SRD5A2 with 3-androstanediol-glucuronide (rs2208532, mean difference = 11.8%, P = 1.82 x 10–6). Genetic variation in genes in the sex steroid hormone pathway is associated with differences in circulating SHBG and sex steroid hormones.

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