Association between apolipoprotein E polymorphisms and gastric cancer in a hospital-based Turkish population

Abstract

Involved in the lipid transport and catabolism, nerve regeneration, immune system regulation and cell proliferation ApoE is a important secretory glycoprotein that is a ligand for LDL receptors and ApoE receptors. Both causative and protective effects of ApoE polymorphic variants and alleles have been correlated with several diseases including cancer types such as gastric cancer which is the one responsible of cancer-related deaths. The aim of the current study was to evaluate association between genotypes of the ApoE and gastric cancer risk in hospital-based Turkish population and also to demonstrate allele frequencies and genotype distributions of ApoE gene in gastric cancer in Turkish population. To the best of our knowledge there is no data related to gastric cancer and ApoE polymorphism association in the Turkish population. Our results showed that there is no statistically significant association between genotypes and alleles of ApoE and gastric cancer risk (p>0.05 for all frequencies and genotypes). May be this is because of the small population size in our study, thus further studies such as expression studies and meta-analysis with large population size and detailed demographic data are necessary in order to confirm the causative alleles of ApoE in gastric cancer. In the light of these, new therapeutic agents and clinical biomarkers might be investigated in the future.