Strong disease risk from a common mtDNA variant

A recent study by Petros and colleagues announced at the meetings of the American Association for Cancer Research (hat tip: Dienekes) shows that haplogroup U, which is possessed by around 9.6 percent of Americans, is associated with an increased rate of renal and prostate cancer.

From the press release on EurekAlert:

"We found that 16.7 percent of the prostate cancer patients and 20.7 percent of renal cancer patients are from the U haplogroup," Petros noted. "If you are a Caucasian American and are of haplogroup U, you have roughly twofold increased risk over other Caucasian American haplogroups.

Is this at last a reason to sign up for the Genographic Project? I guess not for me, since they are only doing the mtDNA haplogroup assessment for female samples!