Local radiotherapy for cancer patients is associated with mosaic loss of chromosome Y, a hallmark of male aging

Mosaic loss of chromosome Y (mLOY) is the most common somatic mutation in hematopoietic cells of aging men and is linked to cancer risk and mortality. However, its relationship with treatment modalities remains unclear. In 348 prostate cancer patients at Juntendo University Hospital, local radiotherapy was associated with a higher prevalence of mLOY (OR = 2.55, 95% CI: 1.08-6.50, P = 0.04), whereas surgery and endocrine therapy were not. We then examined BioBank Japan data from over 30,000 patients with prostate, lung, colorectal, and gastric cancers. Fixed-effect meta-analysis across these sites showed a significant association between radiotherapy and mLOY (OR = 1.48, 95% CI: 1.11-1.98, P = 0.01). No significant effect heterogeneity was observed across cancer types (Q = 0.36, I² = 0%, P = 0.95). Our findings suggest that radiotherapy may exacerbate genomic instability, indicating a potential vulnerability in certain cancer patients to DNA damage induced by radiation therapy.