Genetic variants at 6p21.33 are associated with susceptibility to follicular lymphoma

Christine Skibola and colleagues report a genome-wide association study for three subtypes of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. They report an association of a variant in the PSORS1 region in the MHC to increased risk of follicular lymphoma. We conducted genome-wide association studies of non-Hodgkin lymphoma using Illumina HumanHap550 BeadChips to identify subtype-specific associations in follicular, diffuse large B-cell and chronic lymphocytic leukemia/small lymphocytic lymphomas. We found that rs6457327 on 6p21.33 was associated with susceptibility to follicular lymphoma (FL; N = 189 cases, 592 controls) with validation in another 456 FL cases and 2,785 controls (combined allelic P = 4.7 × 10−11). The region of strongest association overlapped C6orf15 (STG), located near psoriasis susceptibility region 1 (PSORS1).