Publications by authors named "Wichmann H"

Background: Increased lung-cancer risks for low socioeconomic status (SES) groups are only partially attributable to smoking habits. Little effort has been made to investigate the persistent risks related to low SES by quantification of potential biases.

Methods: Based on 12 case-control studies, including 18 centers of the international SYNERGY project (16,550 cases, 20,147 controls), we estimated controlled direct effects (CDE) of SES on lung cancer via multiple logistic regression, adjusted for age, study center, and smoking habits, and stratified by sex.

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  • * The newly developed multi-ancestry PRS showed a strong correlation with LUAD risk, indicating that individuals in the highest PRS percentile had significantly increased risk compared to those in the lowest.
  • * Findings suggest that those in the highest risk category have a lifetime risk of about 6.69%, and they reach the average population's 10-year risk for LUAD by age 41, highlighting the importance of multi-ancestry PRS for better risk assessment in this group.
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Objective: To assess risk factors associated with loss to follow up in patients referred for colposcopy after abnormal cervical cytology during pregnancy in a Southern safety net hospital population.

Methods: An urban colposcopy center was queried for patients referred for follow up of abnormal cervical cytology during pregnancy and the postpartum period. Patients were identified through a standardized referral code in the electronic medical record.

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Background: Although polygenic risk score (PRS) has emerged as a promising tool for predicting cancer risk from genome-wide association studies (GWAS), the individual-level accuracy of lung cancer PRS and the extent to which its impact on subsequent clinical applications remains largely unexplored.

Methods: Lung cancer PRSs and confidence/credible interval (CI) were constructed using two statistical approaches for each individual: (1) the weighted sum of 16 GWAS-derived significant SNP loci and the CI through the bootstrapping method (PRS-16-CV) and (2) LDpred2 and the CI through posteriors sampling (PRS-Bayes), among 17,166 lung cancer cases and 12,894 controls with European ancestry from the International Lung Cancer Consortium. Individuals were classified into different genetic risk subgroups based on the relationship between their own PRS mean/PRS CI and the population level threshold.

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  • The study assessed how different dimensions of the quantitative job-exposure matrix (SYN-JEM) impact the correlation between silica exposure and lung cancer risk, using data from 16,901 lung cancer cases and 20,965 controls from global studies.
  • The analysis revealed that including all dimensions of SYN-JEM resulted in the best fit for predicting lung cancer odds, while omitting job-specific estimates led to a poor model fit.
  • The findings suggest that to accurately model the exposure-response relationship between silica and lung cancer, it’s crucial to use all relevant factors, including job specifics, time, and region in the analysis.
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Background: While much research has been done to identify individual workplace lung carcinogens, little is known about joint effects on risk when workers are exposed to multiple agents.

Objectives: We investigated the pairwise joint effects of occupational exposures to asbestos, respirable crystalline silica, metals (i.e.

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Background: Worldwide, lung cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women. The present study explored associations between occupational exposures that are prevalent among women, and lung cancer.

Methods: Data from 10 case-control studies of lung cancer from Europe, Canada, and New Zealand conducted between 1988 and 2008 were combined.

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Background: Clinical, molecular, and genetic epidemiology studies displayed remarkable differences between ever- and never-smoking lung cancer.

Methods: We conducted a stratified multi-population (European, East Asian, and African descent) association study on 44,823 ever-smokers and 20,074 never-smokers to identify novel variants that were missed in the non-stratified analysis. Functional analysis including expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) colocalization and DNA damage assays, and annotation studies were conducted to evaluate the functional roles of the variants.

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Unlabelled: Cigarette smoke, containing both nicotine and carcinogens, causes lung cancer. However, not all smokers develop lung cancer, highlighting the importance of the interaction between host susceptibility and environmental exposure in tumorigenesis. Here, we aimed to delineate the interaction between metabolizing ability of tobacco carcinogens and smoking intensity in mediating genetic susceptibility to smoking-related lung tumorigenesis.

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Background: Although the associations between genetic variations and lung cancer risk have been explored, the epigenetic consequences of DNA methylation in lung cancer development are largely unknown. Here, the genetically predicted DNA methylation markers associated with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) risk by a two-stage case-control design were investigated.

Methods: The genetic prediction models for methylation levels based on genetic and methylation data of 1595 subjects from the Framingham Heart Study were established.

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Benzene has been classified as carcinogenic to humans, but there is limited evidence linking benzene exposure to lung cancer. We aimed to examine the relationship between occupational benzene exposure and lung cancer. Subjects from 14 case-control studies across Europe and Canada were pooled.

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Conventional measurements of fasting and postprandial blood glucose levels investigated in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) cannot capture the effects of DNA variability on 'around the clock' glucoregulatory processes. Here we show that GWAS meta-analysis of glucose measurements under nonstandardized conditions (random glucose (RG)) in 476,326 individuals of diverse ancestries and without diabetes enables locus discovery and innovative pathophysiological observations. We discovered 120 RG loci represented by 150 distinct signals, including 13 with sex-dimorphic effects, two cross-ancestry and seven rare frequency signals.

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Objectives: To understand perinatal risks associated with social needs in pregnancy Methods. Multivariable log-binomial regression analyses adjusting for age, parity, and insurance were used to evaluate the relationship between any social need (e.g.

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  • Lung adenocarcinoma is the most prevalent form of lung cancer, and existing known genetic risk factors account for only a small portion of its heritability.
  • A comprehensive genome-wide association study involving nearly 22,000 cases and over 150,000 controls identified 12 new genetic variants linked to the disease, raising the count to 28 variants across 25 distinct locations in the genome.
  • The study emphasized that these genetic markers are particularly significant in East Asian populations, especially among never-smokers, and indicates that further research could inform better prevention and treatment strategies tailored to these populations.
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Introduction: Mosaic chromosomal alterations (mCAs) detected in white blood cells represent a type of clonal hematopoiesis (CH) that is understudied compared with CH-related somatic mutations. A few recent studies indicated their potential link with nonhematological cancers, especially lung cancer.

Methods: In this study, we investigated the association between mCAs and lung cancer using the high-density genotyping data from the OncoArray study of INTEGRAL-ILCCO, the largest single genetic study of lung cancer with 18,221 lung cancer cases and 14,825 cancer-free controls.

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The German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) is one of the German Centres for Health Research and aims to conduct early and guideline-relevant studies to develop new therapies and diagnostics that impact the lives of people with cardiovascular disease. Therefore, DZHK members designed a collaboratively organised and integrated research platform connecting all sites and partners. The overarching objectives of the research platform are the standardisation of prospective data and biological sample collections among all studies and the development of a sustainable centrally standardised storage in compliance with general legal regulations and the FAIR principles.

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The German National Cohort (NAKO) is a multidisciplinary, population-based prospective cohort study that aims to investigate the causes of widespread diseases, identify risk factors and improve early detection and prevention of disease. Specifically, NAKO is designed to identify novel and better characterize established risk and protection factors for the development of cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases, musculoskeletal diseases, respiratory and infectious diseases in a random sample of the general population. Between 2014 and 2019, a total of 205,415 men and women aged 19-74 years were recruited and examined in 18 study centres in Germany.

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  • - The study analyzed data from 703,901 individuals and identified 99 genetic loci related to physical activity levels and sedentary behavior, particularly focusing on leisure time activities and screen use.
  • - Certain genes linked to sedentary behavior show heightened expression in skeletal muscle when influenced by resistance training, highlighting a connection between genetics and exercise.
  • - The findings suggest that lower screen time and increased physical activity can positively impact health, but these effects may be influenced by factors like body mass index (BMI).
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  • There is limited evidence linking lung cancer risk with hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) and nickel exposure, prompting a study that pooled data from 14 case-control studies in Europe and Canada involving over 16,000 lung cancer cases.
  • The study utilized a job-exposure matrix to estimate exposure levels to Cr(VI) and nickel, analyzing their effects alongside smoking habits while adjusting for other variables.
  • Findings showed increased odds ratios for lung cancer associated with higher exposure levels, particularly among men, and indicated that the combined effects of these exposures and smoking were greater than additive but similar to multiplicative.
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Background: Despite growing acceptance of the role of context in shaping perinatal risk, data on how neighborhood factors may identify high-risk obstetric patients is limited. In this study, we evaluated the effect of neighborhood deprivation and neighborhood racial composition on severe maternal morbidity (SMM) among persons delivered in a large public health system in Atlanta, Georgia.

Methods: We conducted a population cohort study using electronic medical record data on all deliveries at Grady Memorial Hospital during 2011-2020.

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To identify new susceptibility loci to lung cancer among diverse populations, we performed cross-ancestry genome-wide association studies in European, East Asian and African populations and discovered five loci that have not been previously reported. We replicated 26 signals and identified 10 new lead associations from previously reported loci. Rare-variant associations tended to be specific to populations, but even common-variant associations influencing smoking behavior, such as those with CHRNA5 and CYP2A6, showed population specificity.

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Introduction: Although genome-wide association studies have been conducted to investigate genetic variation of lung tumorigenesis, little is known about gene-gene (G × G) interactions that may influence the risk of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Methods: Leveraging a total of 445,221 European-descent participants from the International Lung Cancer Consortium OncoArray project, Transdisciplinary Research in Cancer of the Lung and UK Biobank, we performed a large-scale genome-wide G × G interaction study on European NSCLC risk by a series of analyses. First, we used BiForce to evaluate and rank more than 58 billion G × G interactions from 340,958 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).

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Background: Exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) occurs widely in occupational settings. We investigated the association between occupational exposure to PAH and lung cancer risk and joint effects with smoking within the SYNERGY project.

Methods: We pooled 14 case-control studies with information on lifetime occupational and smoking histories conducted between 1985 and 2010 in Europe and Canada.

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Differences by sex in lung cancer incidence and mortality have been reported which cannot be fully explained by sex differences in smoking behavior, implying existence of genetic and molecular basis for sex disparity in lung cancer development. However, the information about sex dimorphism in lung cancer risk is quite limited despite the great success in lung cancer association studies. By adopting a stringent two-stage analysis strategy, we performed a genome-wide gene-sex interaction analysis using genotypes from a lung cancer cohort including ~ 47 000 individuals with European ancestry.

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The development of metabolomics in clinical applications has been limited by the lack of validation in large multicenter studies. Large population cohorts and their biobanks are a valuable resource for acquiring insights into molecular disease mechanisms. Nevertheless, most of their collections are not tailored for metabolomics and have been created without specific attention to the pre-analytical requirements for high-quality metabolome assessment.

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