Beth Y. Karlan

Background: Comorbidities can affect survival of ovarian cancer patients by influencing treatment efficacy. However, little evidence exists on the association between individual concurrent comorbidities and prognosis in ovarian cancer patie…

To identify common alleles associated with different histotypes of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), we pooled data from multiple genome-wide genotyping projects totaling 25,509 EOC cases and 40,941 controls. We identified nine new susceptib…

PURPOSE: Cancer antigen 125 (CA125) is a glycoprotein expressed by epithelial cells of several normal tissue types and overexpressed by several epithelial cancers. Serum CA125 levels are mostly used as an aid in the diagnosis of ovarian can…

BACKGROUND: Regulatory T (Treg) cells, a subset of CD4+ T lymphocytes, are mediators of immunosuppression in cancer, and, thus, variants in genes encoding Treg cell immune molecules could be associated with ovarian cancer. METHODS: In a po…

OBJECTIVE: Clinical genetic testing is commercially available for rs61764370, an inherited variant residing in a KRAS 3' UTR microRNA binding site, based on suggested associations with increased ovarian and breast cancer risk as well as wit…

Ovarian cancer is not a single disease and can be subdivided into at least five different histological subtypes that have different identifiable risk factors, cells of origin, molecular compositions, clinical features and treatments. Ovaria…

Disruption in circadian gene expression, whether due to genetic variation or environmental factors (e.g., light at night, shiftwork), is associated with increased incidence of breast, prostate, gastrointestinal and hematologic cancers and g…

The current standard of care for epithelial ovarian cancer does not discriminate between different histologic subtypes (serous, clear cell, endometrioid and mucinous) despite the knowledge that ovarian carcinoma subtypes do not respond unif…

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether endometriosis-associated genetic variation affects risk of ovarian cancer. DESIGN: Pooled genetic analysis. SETTING: University hospital. PATIENT(S): Genetic data from 46,176 participants (15,361 ovarian ca…

BACKGROUND: Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the most lethal gynecological malignancy, responsible for 13 000 deaths per year in the United States. Risk prediction based on identifying germline mutations in ovarian cancer susceptibility g…

Bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO) has become the standard-of-care for risk reduction in women at hereditary risk of ovarian cancer. Although this procedure significantly decreases both the incidence of and mortality from ovarian cancer,…

SCOPE: We reevaluated previously reported associations between variants in pathways of one-carbon (1-C) (folate) transfer genes and ovarian carcinoma (OC) risk, and in related pathways of purine and pyrimidine metabolism, and assessed inter…

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is a heterogeneous cancer with both genetic and environmental risk factors. Variants influencing the risk of developing the less-common EOC subtypes have not been fully investigated. We performed a genome-wid…

A missense single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the immune modulatory gene IL1A has been associated with ovarian cancer risk (rs17561). Although the exact mechanism through which this SNP alters risk of ovarian cancer is not clearly unde…

Survival in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is influenced by the host immune response, yet the key genetic determinants of inflammation and immunity that affect prognosis are not known. The nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) transcription factor fam…

HNF1B is overexpressed in clear cell epithelial ovarian cancer, and we observed epigenetic silencing in serous epithelial ovarian cancer, leading us to hypothesize that variation in this gene differentially associates with epithelial ovaria…