Background: Apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease 1 (APE1) has a central role in the repair of apurinic apyrimidic sites through both its endonuclease and its phosphodiesterase activities. A common APE1 polymorphism, T1349G (rs3136820), was previously shown to be associated with the risk of cancers.
Objective: We hypothesized that the APE1 T1349G polymorphism is also associated with risk of gastric cancer.
Methods: In a hospital-based case-control study of 338 case patients with newly diagnosed gastric cancer and 362 cancer-free controls frequency-matched by age and sex, we genotyped the T1349G polymorphism and assessed its associations with risk of gastric cancer.
Results: Compared with the APE1 TT genotype, individuals with the variant TG/GG genotypes had a significantly increased risk of gastric cancer (odds ratio = 1.69, 95% confidence interval = 1.19-2.40), which was more pronounced among subgroups of aged ≤ 60 years, male, ever smokers, and ever drinkers. Further analyses revealed that the variant genotypes were associated with an increased risk for diffuse-type, low depth of tumor infiltration (T1 and T2), and lymph node metastasis gastric cancer.
Conclusions: The APE1 T1349G polymorphism may be a marker for the development of gastric cancer in the Chinese population. Larger studies are required to validate these findings in diverse populations.