Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the methylation status of three cell adhesion-related genes including CDH1, TSLC1 and TIMP3 in non-small cell lung cancer and explore its association with clinicopathologic features and various environmental risk factors.
Methods: We detected the aberrant methylation presence of these genes by methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction and analyzed the potential correlations with multivariate logistic regression model as well as stepwise logistic regression.
Results: For CDH1, promoter methylation was less frequent in adenosquamous carcinomas than adenocarcinomas (OR=0.35, 95%CI=0.13-0.96); pickled food increased the methylation frequency (OR=2.23, 95%CI=1.09-4.54) while light smoking and fruit intake decreased that (OR=0.43, 95%CI=0.19-0.97; OR=0.37, 95%CI=0.15-0.95). For TSLC1, males and toxin exposure increased methylation frequency (OR=6.25, 95%CI=1.05-37.13; OR=2.42, 95%CI=1.01-5.77) while light smoking and radiation exposure decreased that (OR=0.14, 95%CI=0.03-0.60; OR=0.17, 95%CI=0.04-0.87). For TIMP3, males showed lower methylation frequency than females (OR=0.18, 95%CI=0.04-0.88) while central lung cancer, heavy smoking and radiation exposure presented higher aberrant DNA methylation status (OR=2.19, 95%CI=1.07-4.52; OR=6.99, 95%CI=1.32-37.14; OR=2.30, 95%CI=1.04-5.08).
Conclusions: Aberrant promoter methylation of cell adhesion-related tumor suppressor genes in lung cancer displayed varieties of gene-specific correlations with clinicopathologic features and various environmental risk factors.