In prostate adenocarcinoma, besides mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that are known to increase the incidence of high-risk cancer in young patients, new studies have shown mutation in other gene such as HOXB13 and also polymorphisms in MYC, MSMB, KLK2 and KLK3 that can be related to hereditary prostate cancer.
To examine the possibility that germ-line BRCA1 mutations were associated with hereditary prostate cancer, individuals from 93 families with evidence of linkage to chromosome 17q were screened for germ-line BRCA1 mutations.
Blood DNA from affected individuals in 38 prostate cancer clusters was analyzed for germ-line mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 to assess the contribution of each of these genes to familial prostate cancer.
Thus, BRCA1 and BRCA2 appear to have a limited role in familial prostate cancer, and families with both prostate and breast cancer may result from mutations in other predisposition genes.