XRCC1 Polymorphisms are Associated with Cervical Cancer Risk and Response to Chemotherapy: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Background: Functional single nucleotide polymorphisms of x-ray repair cross-complementing protein1 (XRCC1) have been suspected to contribute to uterine cervical cancer risk for a long time; however, mostprevious case-control studies were small sized and biased. Additionally, recent studies suggested that XRCC1polymorphisms could be a biomarker of response to platinum-based chemotherapy.
Methods: A comprehensivesearch was conducted to retrieve eligible studies and odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs)were calculated to measure association strength.
Results: A total of 13 studies were identified and analyzed. Wefound that the Arg194Trp polymorphism (Trp vs. Arg, OR=1.342, 95% CI: 1.176) was associated with increasedrisk of cervical cancer, while no significant association was found with Arg280His (His vs. Arg, OR=1.059, 95%CI: 0.863, 1.299) or Arg399Gln (Gln vs. Arg, OR=1.144, 95% CI: 0.938, 1.394). As for response to platinumbasedchemotherapy, the variant XRCC1 399Gln allele (Gln vs. Arg, OR=0.345, 95% CI: 0.163, 0.729) waslinked with a poor response; however, the Arg194Trp polymorphism (TrpArg vs. ArgArg, OR=6.421, 95% CI:1.573, 26.205) predicted a good response.
Conclusion: The Arg194Trp polymorphism of XRCC1 increases riskof cervical cancer; the variant 399Gln allele predicts poor response to platinum-based chemotherapy, while theArg194Trp polymorphism indicates a good response.