association of the -160 c>a polymorphism in the cdh1 promoter with gastric cancer: a case-control study

E-cadherin is a tumor suppressor protein that plays a crucial role in cell-cell 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 e-cadherin 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 pcr-rflp 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= 0.772-1.962, pvalue= 0.383), but statistical analysis revealed the absence of association between aa genotype and gastric cancer risk (or=1.719, 95% ci= 0.656-4.502, p-value= 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 ethnicity-dependent risk factor. further works with a larger sample size and including other criteria such as h. pylori infection status are needed for more accuracy.