Association of the 160 C gt;A Polymorphism in the CDH1 Promoter with Gastric Cancer: A Casecontrol Study

Ecadherin is a tumor suppressor protein that plays a crucial role in cellcell adherens junction and tissue architecture and it is hypothesized to participate in carcinogenesis. It has been shown that a polymorphism in the upstream of the transcription start site of the CDH1 gene affects Ecadherin transcriptional regulation and seems to be associated with a variety of cancers. For the first time, we investigated the association of the rs16260 in the 5’untranslated region of the CDH1 gene with gastric cancer in Iranian population. Seventy eight patients with gastric cancer and 72 healthy individuals were included and genotyped for this SNP using the PCRRFLP method. Our results showed that the frequency of the AA genotype in gastric cancer patients (16 of 78, 20.5%) was higher than healthy individuals (9 of 72, 12.5%), the frequency of the A allele in the patients group was higher than controls (OR=1.231, 95% CI= 0.7721.962, pvalue= 0.383), but statistical analysis revealed the absence of association between AA genotype and gastric cancer risk (OR=1.719, 95% CI= 0.6564.502, pvalue= 0.268). In conclusion, our results suggest that this substitution and the AA genotype have not a major impact on the individual’s susceptibility to gastric cancer, and therefore this SNP may be an ethnicitydependent risk factor. Further works with larger sample size and including other criteria such as H. pylori infection status are needed for more accuracy.