Issues

The cover image is adapted from Fig. 2 in the article, “Genome-Wide Analysis to Assess if Heavy Alcohol Consumption Modifies the Association between SNPs and Pancreatic Cancer Risk,” by Ni and colleagues. Pancreatic cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related death globally and risk factors for pancreatic cancer include common genetic variants and potentially heavy alcohol consumption. To assess if genetic variants modify the association between heavy alcohol consumption and pancreatic cancer risk, the authors conducted a genome-wide interaction analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) by heavy alcohol consumption (more than three drinks per day) for pancreatic cancer in European ancestry populations from genomewide association studies (GWAS). Figure 2 shows the results of the SNPs by heavy alcohol consumption interaction analysis using Manhattan plots. The authors identified a novel genomic region that may be associated with pancreatic cancer risk in conjunction with heavy alcohol consumption located near an eQTL for the NRP1, a protein that plays an important role in the development and progression of pancreatic cancer. This work can provide insight into the etiology of pancreatic cancer particularly in heavy drinkers. For more information, see the article beginning on page 1229.