Loss of Y Chromosome in Aging Men Correlates With Cancer Risks

barbara hudson writes:

The Atlantic reports aging causes men to lose Y chromosomes.

Researchers have found men who are missing the Y chromosome in as many as 87 percent of cells in their blood.

The Y chromosome is the smallest one, and errors make it more likely that it will fail to replicate during cell division. When this happens, future generations of those cells also no longer have a Y chromosome.

The ongoing loss of Y chromosomes correlates with increases in cancer.

In [samples of] blood, loss of the Y chromosome in some cells is the most commonly observed mosaicism, but there are countless other examples. In women, some blood cells lose one X chromosome. Other subsets of blood cells might gain a mutation in just one gene, lose only a small bit of a chromosome, or even gain an entire chromosome. (Red blood cells don't carry DNA at all, so this applies only to white blood cells.)

Perry and his colleagues also wanted to understand why the Y chromosome disappears in some men but not others. They looked into whether certain genetic variants on other chromosomes predisposed men one way or another, and they ended up finding 156 variants linked to Y-chromosome loss. Many are also near cancer-susceptibility genes, and having these same variants was correlated with higher risk of prostate and testicular cancer in men-as well as glioma, kidney, and other cancers in both men and women.

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.