Cumulative Small Effect Genetic Markers and the Risk of Colorectal Cancer in Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia

Figure 2

The association between colorectal cancer risk (-axis) and the number of cumulated risk markers carried by a single subject (-axis) is depicted at (a), independently for each country. The numbers attached to the end of each curve stand for the pool size of markers out of which the number of cumulated risk markers is calculated (see Section 2 for more details). The curve reaching the highest odds ratio (arrow) is represented in detail with confidence intervals and frequency histograms at (b). Note that the pool size of markers may be larger than the number of cumulated risk markers carried by a single subject. The odds ratio for 0 cumulated markers could not be calculated for the Estonian sample due to the complete absence of noncarriers among cases.