Repurposing Non-invasive prenatal testing data; population study of single nucleotide variants associated with colorectal cancer and Lynch syndrome

Abstract PURPOSE: In our previous work, we described genomic data generated through non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) based on low-coverage massively parallel whole-genome sequencing of total plasma DNA of pregnant women in Slovakia as a valuable source of population specific data. In the present study, we used these data to determine the population allele frequency of common risk variants located in genes associated with colorectal cancer (CRC) and Lynch syndrome (LS). METHODS: Allele frequencies of identified variants were compared with six world populations to detect significant differences between populations. Finally, we interpreted variants and searched for functional consequences and clinical significance of variants using publicly available databases.RESULTS: Although we could not identify any pathogenic variants associated with CRC or LS in the Slovak population using NIPT data, we observed significant differences in the allelic frequency of risk CRC variants previously reported in GWAS and common variants located in genes associated with LS. CONCLUSION: As Slovakia is the third country with the highest incidence of CRC per 100 000 population in the world, we highlight a need for studies dedicated to the cause of such a high incidence of CRC in Slovakia. We also assume that extensive cross-country data aggregation of NIPT results would represent an unprecedented source of information about human genome variation, also in cancer research.