Genome-wide association study of prostate cancer-specific survival

BACKGROUND: Unnecessary intervention and overtreatment of indolent disease are common challenges in clinical management of prostate cancer. Improved tools to distinguish lethal from indolent disease are critical. METHODS: We performed a genome-wide survival analysis of cause-specific death in 24,023 prostate cancer patients (3,513 disease-specific deaths) from the PRACTICAL and BPC3 consortia. Top findings were assessed for replication in a Norwegian cohort (CONOR). RESULTS: We observed no significant association between genetic variants and prostate cancer survival. CONCLUSIONS: Common genetic variants with large impact on prostate cancer survival were not observed in this study. IMPACT: Future studies should be designed for identification of rare variants with large effect sizes or common variants with small effect sizes.