Alcohol Intake and Alcohol-SNP Interactions Associated with Prostate Cancer Aggressiveness

Understanding and Addressing Prostate Cancer Disparities in Diagnosis, Treatment, and Outcomes Among Black Men

Despite advances in screening, diagnosis, and treatment for prostate cancer (PCa), Black men tend to be diagnosed at younger ages, have higher mortality rates, and are at increased risk of recurrence or metastasis compared to their White counterparts. PCa disparities among Black men are caused by a complex interaction of social, behavioral, and biological factors across the public policy, community, organizational, interpersonal, and individual levels. Key contributing factors include mistrust in the health care system, poor communication between patients and providers, low awareness of screening guidelines, and high medical costs. These disparities are further exacerbated by the low representation of Black men in clinical trials, which limits access to high-quality cancer care and generalizability for PCa treatments. In this narrative review of the existing literature, we examined the epidemiology and identified contributing factors, and propose multi-level strategies to address and mitigate disparities among Black men with PCa.

Genetic correlation for alcohol consumption between Europeans and East Asians

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified many genetic variants associated with alcohol consumption in Europeans and East Asians, as well as other populations. However, the genetic homogeneity and heterogeneity between these populations have not been thoroughly investigated, despite evidence of varying effect sizes of variants between ethnicities and the presence of population-specific strong signals of selection on loci associated with alcohol consumption. In order to better understand the relationship between Europeans and East Asians in the genetic architecture of alcohol consumption, we compared their heritability and evaluated their genetic correlation using GWAS results from UK Biobank (UKB) and Biobank Japan (BBJ). We found that these two populations have low genetic correlation due to the large difference on chromosome 12. After excluding this chromosome, the genetic correlation was moderately high ([Formula: see text] = 0.544, p = 1.12e-4) and 44.31% of the genome-wide causal variants were inferred to be shared between Europeans and East Asians. Given those observations, we conducted a meta-analysis on UKB and BBJ and identified new signals, including the CADM2 gene on chromosome 3, which has been associated with various behavioral and metabolic traits. Overall, our findings suggest that the genetic architecture of alcohol consumption is largely shared between Europeans and East Asians, but there are exceptions such as the enrichment of heritability on chromosome 12 in East Asians.

Exploring the prognostic significance of PKCε variants in cervical cancer

BACKGROUND

Protein Kinase C-epsilon (PKCε) is a member of the novel subfamily of PKCs (nPKCs) that plays a role in cancer development. Studies have revealed that its elevated expression levels are associated with cervical cancer. Previously, we identified pathogenic variations in its different domains through various bioinformatics tools and molecular dynamic simulation. In the present study, the aim was to find the association of its variants rs1553369874 and rs1345511001 with cervical cancer and to determine the influence of these variants on the protein-protein interactions of PKCε, which can lead towards cancer development and poor survival rates.

METHODS

The association of the variants with cervical cancer and its clinicopathological features was determined through genotyping analysis. Odds ratio and relative risk along with Fisher exact test were calculated to evaluate variants significance and disease risk. Protein-protein docking was performed and docked complexes were subjected to molecular dynamics simulation to gauge the variants impact on PKCε's molecular interactions.

RESULTS

This study revealed that genetic variants rs1553369874 and rs1345511001 were associated with cervical cancer. Smad3 interacts with PKCε and this interaction promotes cervical cancer angiogenesis; therefore, Smad3 was selected for protein-protein docking. The analysis revealed PKCε variants promoted aberrant interactions with Smad3 that might lead to the activation of oncogenic pathways. The data obtained from this study suggested the prognostic significance of PRKCE gene variants rs1553369874 and rs1345511001.

CONCLUSION

Through further in vitro and in vivo validation, these variants can be used at the clinical level as novel prognostic markers and therapeutic targets against cervical cancer.

Alcohol and Prostate Cancer: Time to Draw Conclusions

It has been a long-standing debate in the research and medical societies whether alcohol consumption is linked to the risk of prostate cancer (PCa). Many comprehensive studies from different geographical areas and nationalities have shown that moderate and heavy drinking is positively correlated with the development of PCa. Nevertheless, some observations could not confirm that such a correlation exists; some even suggest that wine consumption could prevent or slow prostate tumor growth. Here, we have rigorously analyzed the evidence both for and against the role of alcohol in PCa development. We found that many of the epidemiological studies did not consider other, potentially critical, factors, including diet (especially, low intake of fish, vegetables and linoleic acid, and excessive use of red meat), smoking, family history of PCa, low physical activity, history of high sexual activities especially with early age of first intercourse, and sexually transmitted infections. In addition, discrepancies between observations come from selectivity criteria for control groups, questionnaires about the type and dosage of alcohol, and misreported alcohol consumption. The lifetime history of alcohol consumption is critical given that a prostate tumor is typically slow-growing; however, many epidemiological observations that show no association monitored only current or relatively recent drinking status. Nevertheless, the overall conclusion is that high alcohol intake, especially binge drinking, is associated with increased risk for PCa, and this effect is not limited to any type of beverage. Alcohol consumption is also directly linked to PCa lethality as it may accelerate the growth of prostate tumors and significantly shorten the time for the progression to metastatic PCa. Thus, we recommend immediately quitting alcohol for patients diagnosed with PCa. We discuss the features of alcohol metabolism in the prostate tissue and the damaging effect of ethanol metabolites on intracellular organization and trafficking. In addition, we review the impact of alcohol consumption on prostate-specific antigen level and the risk for benign prostatic hyperplasia. Lastly, we highlight the known mechanisms of alcohol interference in prostate carcinogenesis and the possible side effects of alcohol during androgen deprivation therapy.