Mycotoxin contamination in the Arab world: Highlighting the main knowledge gaps and the current legislation.

Since the discovery of aflatoxins in the 1960s, knowledge in the mycotoxin research field has increased dramatically. Hundreds of review articles have been published summarizing many different aspects, including mycotoxin contamination per country or region. However, mycotoxin contamination in the Arab world, which includes 22 countries in Africa and Asia, has not yet been specifically reviewed.

Large-scale meta-genome-wide association study reveals common genetic factors linked to radiation-induced acute toxicities across cancer types.

Background: This study was designed to identify common genetic susceptibility and shared genetic variants associated with acute radiation-induced toxicity across 4 cancer types (prostate, head and neck, breast, and lung).

Methods: A genome-wide association study meta-analysis was performed using 19 cohorts totaling 12 042 patients. Acute standardized total average toxicity (STATacute) was modelled using a generalized linear regression model for additive effect of genetic variants, adjusted for demographic and clinical covariates (rSTATacute).

Evaluating approaches for constructing polygenic risk scores for prostate cancer in men of African and European ancestry.

Genome-wide polygenic risk scores (GW-PRSs) have been reported to have better predictive ability than PRSs based on genome-wide significance thresholds across numerous traits. We compared the predictive ability of several GW-PRS approaches to a recently developed PRS of 269 established prostate cancer-risk variants from multi-ancestry GWASs and fine-mapping studies (PRS). GW-PRS models were trained with a large and diverse prostate cancer GWAS of 107,247 cases and 127,006 controls that we previously used to develop the multi-ancestry PRS.

No Association Between Polygenic Risk Scores for Cancer and Development of Radiation Therapy Toxicity.

Purpose: Our aim was to test whether updated polygenic risk scores (PRS) for susceptibility to cancer affect risk of radiation therapy toxicity.

Methods And Materials: Analyses included 9,717 patients with breast (n=3,078), prostate (n=5,748) or lung (n=891) cancer from Radiogenomics and REQUITE Consortia cohorts. Patients underwent potentially curative radiation therapy and were assessed prospectively for toxicity.

Verification of Bound Aminoguanidine as the Marker Residue for the Banned Antibiotic, Nitrovin, in Pig Tissues.

Nitrovin (NTV) belongs to a class of antibiotics called nitrofurans, which are classified as nonallowed pharmacologically active substances that do not have a maximum residue limit listed in EU legislation. The objectives of this study were to confirm aminoguanidine (AGN) as a suitable marker residue to monitor NTV abuse and to investigate its persistence in porcine tissues. In this work, pigs were fed with NTV-medicated feed (50 mg/kg), and tissues (kidney, muscle, and liver) and plasma were collected on different withdrawal days.

Prostate cancer risk stratification improvement across multiple ancestries with new polygenic hazard score.

Background: Prostate cancer risk stratification using single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) demonstrates considerable promise in men of European, Asian, and African genetic ancestries, but there is still need for increased accuracy. We evaluated whether including additional SNPs in a prostate cancer polygenic hazard score (PHS) would improve associations with clinically significant prostate cancer in multi-ancestry datasets.

Methods: In total, 299 SNPs previously associated with prostate cancer were evaluated for inclusion in a new PHS, using a LASSO-regularized Cox proportional hazards model in a training dataset of 72,181 men from the PRACTICAL Consortium.

Agronomic Factors Influencing the Scale of Mycotoxin Contamination of Oats.

Seven agronomic factors (crop season, farming system, harvest date, moisture, county, oat variety, and previous crop) were recorded for 202 oat crops grown across Ireland, and samples were analysed by LC-MS/MS for four major mycotoxins: deoxynivalenol (DON), zearalenone (ZEN), T-2 toxin and HT-2 toxin. Type A trichothecenes were present in 62% of crops, with 7.4% exceeding European regulatory limits.

Natural Co-Occurrence of Multiple Mycotoxins in Unprocessed Oats Grown in Ireland with Various Production Systems.

The natural co-occurrence of 42 mycotoxins was investigated in unprocessed oat grains grown in Ireland. The sample set included a total of 208 oat crops harvested during 2015-2016 and produced using conventional, organic, or gluten free farming systems. A range of different toxins was identified, including the major type A (neosolaniol, HT-2 and T-2 toxins, T-2 triol, and T-2-glucoside, co-occurring in 21 samples) and B trichothecenes (deoxynivalenol, nivalenol, and deoxynivalenol-3-glucoside), enniatins (B1, B, and A1, co-occurring in 12 samples), as well as beauvericin, alternariol, mycophenolic acid, and sterigmatocystin.

Polygenic hazard score is associated with prostate cancer in multi-ethnic populations.

Genetic models for cancer have been evaluated using almost exclusively European data, which could exacerbate health disparities. A polygenic hazard score (PHS) is associated with age at prostate cancer diagnosis and improves screening accuracy in Europeans. Here, we evaluate performance of PHS (PHS, adapted for OncoArray) in a multi-ethnic dataset of 80,491 men (49,916 cases, 30,575 controls).

Trans-ancestry genome-wide association meta-analysis of prostate cancer identifies new susceptibility loci and informs genetic risk prediction.

Prostate cancer is a highly heritable disease with large disparities in incidence rates across ancestry populations. We conducted a multiancestry meta-analysis of prostate cancer genome-wide association studies (107,247 cases and 127,006 controls) and identified 86 new genetic risk variants independently associated with prostate cancer risk, bringing the total to 269 known risk variants. The top genetic risk score (GRS) decile was associated with odds ratios that ranged from 5.

Mycotoxin exposure and human cancer risk: A systematic review of epidemiological studies.

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in investigating the carcinogenicity of mycotoxins in humans. This systematic review aims to provide an overview of data linking exposure to different mycotoxins with human cancer risk. Publications (2019 and earlier) of case-control or longitudinal cohort studies were identified in PubMed and EMBASE.

The Variant C.349A>G Is Associated with Prostate Cancer Risk and Carriers Share a Common Ancestor.

The identification of recurrent founder variants in cancer predisposing genes may have important implications for implementing cost-effective targeted genetic screening strategies. In this study, we evaluated the prevalence and relative risk of the recurrent variant c.349A>G in a series of 462 Portuguese patients with early-onset and/or familial/hereditary prostate cancer (PrCa), as well as in the large multicentre PRACTICAL case-control study comprising 55,162 prostate cancer cases and 36,147 controls.

Mycotoxin exposure assessments in a multi-center European validation study by 24-hour dietary recall and biological fluid sampling.

The European Food Consumption Validation (EFCOVAL) project includes 600 men and women from Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands, and Norway, who had given serum and 24-hour urine samples, and completed 24-hour dietary recall (24-HDR) interviews. Consumption, according to 24-HDR, was matched against the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) databases of mycotoxin contaminations, via the FoodEx1 standard classifications, producing an indirect external estimate of dietary mycotoxin exposure. Direct, internal measurements of dietary mycotoxin exposure were made in serum and urine by ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry.

Publisher Correction: Shared heritability and functional enrichment across six solid cancers.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Shared heritability and functional enrichment across six solid cancers.

Quantifying the genetic correlation between cancers can provide important insights into the mechanisms driving cancer etiology. Using genome-wide association study summary statistics across six cancer types based on a total of 296,215 cases and 301,319 controls of European ancestry, here we estimate the pair-wise genetic correlations between breast, colorectal, head/neck, lung, ovary and prostate cancer, and between cancers and 38 other diseases. We observed statistically significant genetic correlations between lung and head/neck cancer (r = 0.

Author Correction: Germline variation at 8q24 and prostate cancer risk in men of European ancestry.

The original version of this Article contained an error in the spelling of the author Manuela Gago-Dominguez, which was incorrectly given as Manuela G. Dominguez. This has now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article.

Author Correction: Association analyses of more than 140,000 men identify 63 new prostate cancer susceptibility loci.

In the version of this article initially published, the name of author Manuela Gago-Dominguez was misspelled as Manuela Gago Dominguez. The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF version of the article.

Germline variation at 8q24 and prostate cancer risk in men of European ancestry.

Chromosome 8q24 is a susceptibility locus for multiple cancers, including prostate cancer. Here we combine genetic data across the 8q24 susceptibility region from 71,535 prostate cancer cases and 52,935 controls of European ancestry to define the overall contribution of germline variation at 8q24 to prostate cancer risk. We identify 12 independent risk signals for prostate cancer (p < 4.

Circulating Metabolic Biomarkers of Screen-Detected Prostate Cancer in the ProtecT Study.

Background: Whether associations between circulating metabolites and prostate cancer are causal is unknown. We report on the largest study of metabolites and prostate cancer (2,291 cases and 2,661 controls) and appraise causality for a subset of the prostate cancer-metabolite associations using two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR).

Methods: The case-control portion of the study was conducted in nine UK centers with men ages 50-69 years who underwent prostate-specific antigen screening for prostate cancer within the Prostate Testing for Cancer and Treatment (ProtecT) trial.

Fine-mapping of prostate cancer susceptibility loci in a large meta-analysis identifies candidate causal variants.

Prostate cancer is a polygenic disease with a large heritable component. A number of common, low-penetrance prostate cancer risk loci have been identified through GWAS. Here we apply the Bayesian multivariate variable selection algorithm JAM to fine-map 84 prostate cancer susceptibility loci, using summary data from a large European ancestry meta-analysis.