J Natl Cancer Inst. 2025 Nov 9:djaf308. doi: 10.1093/jnci/djaf308. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The associations between different types of diabetes, characterized by distinct pathophysiology and genetic architecture, and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) risk are not understood.
METHODS: We investigated associations of genetic susceptibility to type 2 diabetes (T2D), eight T2D mechanistic clusters, type 1 diabetes (T1D), and maturity-onset diabetes of the young (MODY) with PDAC risk. We used genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary-level statistics for T2D (242,283 cases, 1,569,734 controls), T1D (18,942 cases, 501,638 controls), and PDAC (10,244 cases and 360,535 controls) in individuals of European ancestry.
RESULTS: Two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) using the Robust Adjusted Profile Score (MR-RAPS) method indicated that genetically predicted T2D was associated with PDAC risk (OR = 1.10; 95% CI 1.05-1.15), particularly the T2D obesity (OR = 1.28; 95% CI 1.15-1.42) and lipodystrophy (OR = 1.25; 95% CI 1.03-1.51) clusters. No association was observed for T1D with PDAC risk (OR = 1.01; 95% CI 0.99-1.02). Pathway/gene-set analysis using the summary-based Adaptive Rank Truncated Product (sARTP) method revealed a significant association between the MODY gene-sets and PDAC risk (P = 1.5 × 10-8), which remained after excluding 20 known PDAC GWAS loci (P = 7.6 × 10-4). HNF1A, FOXA3, and HNF4A were the top contributing genes after excluding the previously identified GWAS loci regions.
CONCLUSIONS: Our results from this genetic association study support that T2D, particularly the obesity and lipodystrophy mechanistic clusters, and MODY genomic susceptibility regions play a role in the etiology of PDAC.
PMID:41206949 | DOI:10.1093/jnci/djaf308
