Recently, Jin et al. performed a GWAS study and discovered that three novel intronic susceptibility loci in the genes LRFN2 (rs2494938 at 6p21.1), DNAH11 (rs2285947 at 7p15.3) and PLCXD2 (rs2399395 at 3q13.2) were associated with the risk of ESCC in Han Chinese populations [14]. Here, PLCXD2 is linked to esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.