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Disinfection By-Products in Drinking Water and Bladder Cancer: Evaluation of Risk Modification by Common Genetic Polymorphisms in Two Case–Control Studies

L. B. Beane Freeman, M. Kogevinas, K. Cantor, C. Villanueva, L. Prokunina-Olsson, O. Flórez-Vargas, Jonine D. Figueroa, M. Ward et al.

Environmental Health Perspectives, 2022

989 participants · 15 citations

Abstract

Background: By-products are formed when disinfectants react with organic matter in source water. The most common class of disinfection by-products, trihalomethanes (THMs), have been linked to bladder cancer. Several studies have shown exposure–response associations with THMs in drinking water and bladder cancer risk. Few epidemiologic studies have evaluated gene–environment interactions for total THMs (TTHMs) with known bladder cancer susceptibility variants. Objectives: In this study, we investigated the combined effect on bladder cancer risk contributed by TTHMs, bladder cancer susceptibility variants identified through genome-wide association studies, and variants in several candidate genes. Methods: We analyzed data from two large case–control studies—the New England Bladder Cancer Study (n/n=989 cases/1,162 controls), a population-based study, and the Spanish Bladder Cancer Study (n/n=706 cases/772 controls), a hospital-based study. Because of differences in exposure distributions and metrics, we estimated effects of THMs and genetic variants within each study separately using adjusted logistic regression models to calculate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) with and without interaction terms, and then combined the results using meta-analysis. Results: Of the 16 loci showing strong evidence of association with bladder cancer, rs907611 at 11p15.5 [leukocyte-specific protein 1 (LSP1 region)] showed the strongest associations in the highest exposure…

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