Research article

DNA repair gene XRCC1 polymorphisms and bladder cancer risk

Sei Chung Sak¹ , Jennifer H Barrett² , Alan B Paul³ , D Timothy Bishop² and Anne E Kiltie¹

¹Molecular Radiobiology Group, Section of Oncology, Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine, St James's University Hospital, Leeds, LS9 7TF, UK

²Section of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine, St James's University Hospital, Leeds, LS9 7TF, UK

³Department of Urology, St James's University Hospital, Leeds, LS9 7TF, UK

author email corresponding author email

BMC Genetics 2007, 8:13doi:10.1186/1471-2156-8-13

Published:	10 April 2007

Abstract

Background

Cigarette smoking and chemical occupational exposure are the main known risk factors for bladder transitional cell carcinoma (TCC). Oxidative DNA damage induced by carcinogens present in these exposures requires accurate base excision repair (BER). The XRCC1 protein plays a crucial role in BER by acting as a scaffold for other BER enzymes. Variants in the XRCC1 gene might alter protein structure or function or create alternatively spliced proteins which may influence BER efficiency and hence affect individual susceptibility to bladder cancer. Recent epidemiological studies have shown inconsistent associations between these polymorphisms and bladder cancer. To clarify the situation, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of 14 XRCC1 polymorphisms in a case-control study involving more than 1100 subjects.

Results

We found no evidence of an association between any of the 14 XRCC1 polymorphisms and bladder cancer risk. However, we found carriage of the variant Arg280His allele to be marginally associated with increased bladder cancer risk compared to the wild-type genotype (adjusted odds ratio [95% confidence interval], 1.50 [0.98–2.28], p = 0.06). The association was stronger for current smokers such that individuals carrying the variant 280His allele had a two to three-fold increased risk of bladder cancer compared to those carrying the wildtype genotype (p = 0.09). However, the evidence for gene-environment interaction was not statistically significant (p = 0.45).

Conclusion

We provide no evidence of an association between polymorphisms in XRCC1 and bladder cancer risk, although our study had only limited power to detect the association for low frequency variants, such as Arg280His.