GSTP1 Gene Ile105Val Polymorphism Causes an Elevated Risk for Bladder Carcinogenesis in Smokers

Background: The glutathione S transferase (GST) family of enzymes plays a vital role in the phase IIbiotransformation of environmental carcinogens, pollutants, drugs and other xenobiotics. GSTs are polymorphicand polymorphisms in GST genes have been associated with cancer susceptibility and prognosis. GSTP1 isassociated with risk of various cancers including bladder cancer. A case control study was conducted to determinethe genotype distribution of GSTP1 A>G SNP, to elucidate the possible role of this SNP as a risk factor in urinarybladder cancer (UBC) development and to examine its correlation with clinico-pathologic variables inUBC cases.Materials and
Methods: Using the polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCRRFLP)approach, we tested the genotype distribution of 180 bladder cancer patients in comparison with 210cancer-free controls from the same geographical region with matched frequency in age and gender.
Results: Wedid not observe significant genotype differences between the control and bladder cancer patients overall with anodds ratio (OR)=1.23 (p>0.05). The rare allele (AG+GG) was found to be present more in cases (28.3%) than incontrols (24%), though the association was not significant (p<0.05). However, a significant risk of more than 2-foldwas found for the variant allele (AG+GG) with smokers in cases as compared to controls (p>0.05).
Conclusions:Thus, it is evident from our study that GSTP1 SNP is not implicated overall in bladder cancer, but that the rare,valine-related allele is connected with higher susceptibility to bladder cancer in smokers and also males.