Barrett's and Esophageal Adenocarcinoma Genetic Susceptibility Study (BEAGESS)

BEAGESS is a genome-wide association study (GWAS) which takes advantage of the extensive data collected by investigators in the Barrett's and Esophageal Adenocarcinoma Consortium (BEACON, http://beacon.tlvnet.net), representing many of the high-quality population-based and other epidemiologic studies of BE and EA in the world. The overall goal of our research is to evaluate the influence of genetic susceptibility on risk of EA and its main precancerous condition, BE. The primary aims of the study are to identify tagSNPs most strongly associated with risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma (EA) and Barrett's esophagus (BE). In the secondary aims we will evaluate the extent to which the most significant associations vary according to key environmental and host factors for these conditions, including gender, obesity and cigarette smoking. These results will guide additional exploratory analyses examining ways in which individual SNP results might be aggregated to shed light in the importance of specific pathways relevant to the etiology of BE and EA, and to identify possible epistatic effects.]]>