Deciphering associations for lung cancer risk through imputation and analysis of 12,316 cases and 16,831 controls.

Recent genome-wide association studieshave identified common variants at multiple loci influencing lung cancer risk. To decipherthe genetic basis of the associationsignals at 3q28, 5p15.33, 6p21.33, 9p21 and 12p13.33, we performed a meta-analysis of data from five genome-wide association studiesin populations of European ancestry totalling 12 316 lung cancer cases and 16 831 controls using imputation to recover untyped genotypes. For four of the regions, it was possible to refine the associationsignal identifying a smaller region of interest likely to harbour the functional variant. Our analysis did not provide evidence that any of the associationsat the loci being a consequence of synthetic associationsrather than linkage disequilibriumwith a common risk variant at these risk loci.