Obesity is also considered a risk factor for certain cancers, which motivated researchers to also test whether the BMI-associated FTO SNPs associated with cancer. While some studies found FTO SNPs to influence the risk of some cancers,124-130 others could not confirm this.131-134 Interestingly, two recent large-scale GWAS identified SNPs in the second and eight intron of FTO to be robustly associated with risk of estrogen receptor negative breast cancer135 and melanoma,136 respectively. These two cancer-associated FTO loci are independent (LD r2CEU < 0.10) from each other and from the BMI-associated locus in the first intron. Their association with cancer risk was not mediated through an effect on BMI,135,136 indicating that FTO’s function reaches beyond body weight regulation.
