Background: There is strong evidence for genetic susceptibility to prostate cancer, but most of the genes underlying this susceptibility remain to be identified.
Methods: We reviewed the results of eight genome-wide linkage searches based on 1,293 families with multiple cases of prostate cancer.
Results: Across these studies, 11 linkage peaks with LOD scores in excess of 2 were identified. However, no chromosomal region was reported as significant at this level by more than one study and only one corresponded to a peak previously suggested by another group.
Conclusions: These results indicate that prostate cancer is genetically complex, and that combined analyses of large family sets will be required to evaluate reliably the linkage evidence.
Copyright 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.