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Short Communication |
1 Division of Gastroenterology, Belfast City Hospital; 2 Centre for Clinical and Population Sciences, Queen's University; Divisions of 3 Gastroenterology and 4 Surgery, Royal Group of Hospitals, Belfast, United Kingdom; 5 Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom; 6 Division of Gastroenterology, Daisy Hill Hospital, Newry, United Kingdom; and 7 Division of Surgery, St James's Hospital, Dublin, Ireland
Requests for reprints: Heather R. Ferguson, Level 6 North, Belfast City Hospital, Belfast BT9 7AB, Northern Ireland. Phone: 44-2890-632602; Fax: 44-2890-231907. E-mail: hrferguson{at}doctors.net.uk
| Abstract |
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| Introduction |
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Traditionally, reflux esophagitis has been seen as an early development on the reflux esophagitis-Barrett's esophagus-esophageal adenocarcinoma spectrum (3). However, recent evidence has suggested that reflux esophagitis and Barrett's esophagus may be distinct clinical entities (4). Although the underlying stimulus in these three conditions is gastroesophageal reflux of acid and/or bile, it is likely that various genetic and environmental factors interact to determine an individual's response to refluxate in the esophagus.
Inflammatory disorders, which can be caused by chemical agents (e.g., gastric refluxate and cigarette smoke), are recognized risk factors for carcinogenesis. Chronic inflammation leads to activation of "prosurvival genes," including cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS; ref. 5). Increased expression of both these enzymes has been found in esophageal adenocarcinoma (6-8), Barrett's esophagus (6, 9), and reflux esophagitis (10). It has been shown that downstream mediators on the COX-2 and iNOS pathways lead to tumor promotion by stimulation of proliferation, promotion of angiogenesis, and inhibition of apoptosis (11, 12).
Various single nucleotide polymorphisms have been identified in the COX-2 and iNOS genes.
The COX-2 T>C polymorphism at position 8473 in the 3' untranslated region is in an area shown to contain multiple regulatory elements, which alter COX-2 expression in a murine model (13). The iNOS Ser608 Leu allele (C>T polymorphism) leads to an amino acid alteration in an important regulatory domain of the enzyme (14). The minor allele frequency of these polymorphisms in Caucasian populations has been estimated at 35% and 13%, respectively.8 Because of their putative functional roles, these polymorphisms have been studied in association with various cancers but not in esophageal adenocarcinoma or its precursor lesions Barrett's esophagus and reflux esophagitis. We examined the association between COX-2 8473 T>C and iNOS Ser608 Leu polymorphisms and esophageal adenocarcinoma, Barrett's esophagus, and reflux esophagitis in a population-based case-control study.
| Materials and Methods |
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Esophageal adenocarcinoma cases (ages
85 years) were patients with a histologic confirmation of adenocarcinoma within the esophagus. Cases from Northern Ireland were identified from electronic pathology records from all pathology laboratories within the province. Republic of Ireland cases were identified from the main hospitals involved in the diagnosis and treatment of esophageal cancer.
Barrett's esophagus patients were eligible for inclusion if
3 cm of typical Barrett's mucosa were seen at endoscopy and the presence of specialized intestinal metaplasia was confirmed by histologic examination of biopsy specimens. Patients with dysplasia on histologic examination were not included.
Reflux esophagitis patients were included if there was macroscopically visible erosive esophagitis at endoscopy. Erosive esophagitis was defined as mucosal breaks or erosions within the esophagus (grades 2-4 in the Savary Miller/Hetzel-Dent classification or grades B, C, or D in the Los Angeles classification were included).
Eligible control subjects were adults without a history of esophageal or other gastrointestinal cancer, a known diagnosis of Barrett's esophagus or reflux esophagitis. Controls were frequency matched by sex and 5-year age band to the distribution of esophageal adenocarcinoma patients and selected at random from the General Practice Master Index.
Interview
All subjects underwent a structured computerized interview with trained interviewers. The questions covered demographic characteristics, occurrence of gastroesophageal reflux symptoms, smoking, alcohol intake, dietary history, medication use, occupational history, and anthropometric measures. The reference time point used in the analyses in this study for body mass index, smoking, reflux symptoms, and alcohol use was >5 years before the interview.
Genotyping
DNA was extracted from venous blood samples using the Puregene DNA purification kit (Gentra Systems). The COX-2 8473 T>C (rs5275) and iNOS Ser608 Leu (rs2275218) polymorphisms were genotyped using predesigned and validated TaqMan allelic discrimination assays (Applied Biosystems). Reactions were done using the Applied Biosystems Prism 7900HT sequence detection system, with an annealing temperature of 60°C.
Samples were processed without knowledge of their case-control status. Positive and negative control samples were included in each reaction. Genotyping was repeated for a random selection of 10% of samples, with 100% concordance for all assays. Any samples labeled as "undetermined" by the sequence detection system software were excluded from the analysis. One subject was "undetermined" after genotyping for each assay.
Statistical Analysis
Deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium among cases and controls was tested for using the goodness-of-fit
2 test. Genotype frequencies among cases of esophageal adenocarcinoma, Barrett's esophagus, and reflux esophagitis were compared with controls using the
2 test for association while adjusting for potential confounding factors by logistic regression.
Significant differences were observed between the study groups after analysis of baseline characteristics (Table 1 ). We therefore identified age at interview, sex, body mass index 5 years before interview (kg/m2), years of full-time education, smoking status (never, ex-smoker, current smoker), and alcohol intake (g/d) as potential confounding factors. Trend tests were conducted by assigning the ordinal values 1, 2, and 3 to homozygous wild-type, heterozygotes, and homozygous variant genotypes, respectively, and by adding these scores as a continuous variable in the logistic regression model. Statistical significance was set at P < 0.05. All analyses were done using SPSS for Windows version 13.0 (SPSS).
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| Results |
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The distribution and frequency of genotypes for cases and controls are shown in Table 2 . There were no significant departures from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium for either of the polymorphisms in any of the subject groups. For controls, the frequency of polymorphic variants was 0.32 (COX-2 8473 C) and 0.18 (iNOS Ser608 Leu). These were similar to frequencies reported in Caucasians in the SNP500 Database.9
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| Discussion |
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The strengths of our study include the population-based design, the relatively large sample size, and the efforts made to minimize misclassification bias by characterizing phenotypes clearly. Detailed interview data allowed us to control for a range of potential confounding factors, and DNA was available for analysis in almost all study subjects (>90%). Both polymorphisms were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and had sufficient statistical power (>80%) to detect an OR of >2.0. We carefully selected two polymorphisms to evaluate by a review of published data, thus reducing the likelihood of type I error.
Previous studies in Caucasians investigating association between COX-2 8473 T>C and various cancers have produced conflicting results. Increased risks of breast (16), lung (17), and basal cell (18) carcinoma have been described. However, other studies in breast (19), prostate (20), and colorectal (21) cancers have reported null findings. There is no direct evidence in humans that this polymorphism, located in the 3' untranslated region of exon 10 in the COX-2 gene, has a functional role. However, variation in this region has been shown to alter COX-2 expression in a murine model (13). Increased expression of the COX-2 enzyme in esophageal adenocarcinoma has been well shown in previous studies (6-8). We therefore hypothesize that the expression of the COX-2 8473 C allele, which was associated with an increased risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma, may be higher than that of the "wild-type" 8473 T allele. However, further in vitro analysis of the genetic regulation of COX-2 expression will be necessary before a conclusion on the functionality of the COX-2 8473 T>C polymorphism can be drawn.
Only two studies to date have investigated an association between the iNOS Ser608 Leu polymorphism and cancer both in Asian populations. From China, Shen et al. reported no significant association with gastric cancer (22), and similar null findings were reported in a Korean cervical cancer study (23). These results may in part be explained by the relatively low variant allele frequency in these populations (15.2% and 13.8%, respectively; refs. 22, 23), limiting study power. This may also be a factor in our study, with a variant allele frequency of 18% in controls.
A further limitation of our study was that misclassification bias may have arisen because asymptomatic control subjects did not have endoscopy done to exclude Barrett's esophagus or reflux esophagitis. However, given that the population prevalence of Barrett's esophagus has been estimated at 1.2% and reflux esophagitis at 5.7% (24, 25), this is unlikely to have had a major effect on our findings. In addition, not all patients with reflux esophagitis diagnosed at endoscopy had biopsies taken to definitively exclude Barrett's esophagus, which may have led to further misclassification bias. However, the prevalence of histologic Barrett's esophagus in subjects with endoscopically diagnosed reflux esophagitis has been estimated at 2.6% in a similar Caucasian population (25). If applied to the 230 reflux esophagitis subjects in our study, only 6 subjects with Barrett's esophagus may have been misclassified.
Given that the sample size of our study is relatively small compared with those in more common cancers, such as prostate (20) and breast (19), chance findings cannot be excluded and we did not have adequate power to detect a modest excess risk associated with the iNOS Ser608 Leu polymorphism (OR < 2.0) or to examine the role of possible gene-environment interactions.
In addition, the low participation rate in the control group may have introduced selection bias, which is a common problem in all case-control studies. However, controls in our study were selected at random from the population via a General Practice database.
In conclusion, the COX-2 8473 C allele may be a risk factor for esophageal adenocarcinoma, but further larger population-based studies are required to confirm this finding.
| Footnotes |
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The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked advertisement in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
8 http://snp500cancer.nci.nih.gov/snp ![]()
9 http://snp500cancer.nci.nih.gov ![]()
Received 9/14/07; revised 12/16/07; accepted 12/21/07.
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