The Genetics of Calcium-Triggering Cancers in African-Americans

African-American Males Retain more Calcium which Can Trigger Prostate Cancer

Cancers identified by the uncontrolled proliferation of the TRPV6 mRNA biomarker, kill African-Americans (AAs) at nearly twice the rate of Whites. Malignancies assigned to this class include: Metastatic prostate cancer, triple negative breast cancer, colorectal and multiple myeloma. This ecological model identifies the cause as an ethnic-specific haplotype of the TRPV6 calcium ion channel, which is also proto-oncogenic. This ancestral TRPV6a variant has been shown in several studies to be more calcium absorbent than the non-African/European TRPV6b allele. AAs inherited strong bones from their low-calcium consuming (200-400 mg/day) Niger-Kordofanian West African ancestors. However, AAs are maladapted to the high calcium (1,000+ mg/day) food environment of the U.S. As a consequence, the ancestral TRPV6a allele can become invasively oncogenic when over-exposed to excess free calcium ions, leading to the aforementioned class of cancers.
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