TRA@ copy number was observed to be similar in HBV-positive Chinese individuals and our Korean controls (t test P = 0.477), but differed significantly between the HBV-positive Chinese individuals and our HBV-positive Korean cases (P = 6.572 × 10−13) (Supporting Table S5). Hence, we conclude that hepatitis virus find more infection status, per se, does not account for observed CNV differences between our cases and controls. In our investigation of the association of genomic variation with disease, we also examined individual SNPs in HCC patients and healthy Korean controls. The set of SNPs most strongly correlated with HCC by a trend test

was enriched for polymorphisms in genes involved in antigen presentation. Three of the eight variants with the highest association to liver cancer (rs9267673, rs2647073, and rs3997872) lie in the MHC class II locus (Table 3). None of the three variants is in LD with either of the others. The variant rs9267673 is located adjacent to the gene C2. rs2647073 is in LD with SNPs in a set of genes that includes HLA-DRB1, HLA-DRB6, HLA-DRB5, and HLA-DRA. The SNP rs3997872, on the other hand, is in LD

with SNPs in the HLA-DQA1, HLA-DQB1, HLA-DQA2, and HLA-DQB2 loci. All three SNPS are independently associated with HCC, showing neither an additive nor multiplicative effect. Interestingly, in addition to their association with HCC, two of the three SNPs (rs9267673 and rs2647073) show association to LC (P 0.0052 and 0.0007, respectively). In contrast, rs3997872 is only weakly associated with LC (P is 0.0408) (Supporting Table S3). Comparison selleck inhibitor of SNP allele frequencies in HCC and LC patients, identified two variants that distinguish liver cancer from

cirrhosis (Table 4). An SNP, rs2880301, is located within the TPTE2 gene; the second, rs2551677, lies in a gene-poor region of 2q14.1. Both polymorphisms are distinct from those identified in the comparison of HCC patients and Korean controls. We also examined HCC individuals to determine whether risk alleles at SNPs associated with cancer (Table 3) correlate with hepatitis virus infection status. All eight variants show an adjusted P > PJ34 HCl 0.11 for association with HBV and an adjusted P > 0.48 for association with HCV (Supporting Table S6). Thus, viral infection status does not account for the observed association between SNPs in LD to immune response genes and liver cancer. Finally, we observe no significant association between SNPs in HLA-DP, which has been implicated in HBV susceptibility in Asian populations18 and HCC. We next evaluated whether multiple SNPs in a common biological network, each with a modest individual effect, were associated with HCC. In order to reduce complexity and statistical noise, we first selected the 1,000 most significant SNPs from Stage 1 and Stage 2 and assigned them to biological pathways based on their linkage disequilibrium to genes in the NCI Protein Interaction Database.