A Population-Based Case-Control Study of the XRCC1 Arg399Gln Polymorphism and Susceptibility to Bladder Cancer

A Population-Based Case-Control Study of the XRCC1Arg399Gln Polymorphism and Susceptibility to Bladder Cancer

Departments of ¹Genetics and Complex Diseases and ²Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts and ³Section of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, New Hampshire

Requests for reprints:
Karl T. Kelsey, Department of Genetics and Complex Diseases, Harvard School of Public Health, Building 1, Room 607, 665 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115. Phone: 617-432-3313; Fax: 617-432-0107. E-mail: kelsey{at}hsph.harvard.edu

Abstract

Cigarette smoking is the major cause of bladder cancer. Constituents in tobacco smoke can induce oxidative DNA damage requiring base excision repair. The Arg399Gln polymorphism in the DNA base excision repair gene XRCC1 is associated with several phenotypic markers of reduced DNA repair capacity. Results from several epidemiologic studies suggest that the Arg399Gln polymorphism may influence susceptibility to several cancers including bladder cancer; however, data from large population-based studies are lacking. In a population-based case-control study from New Hampshire, we observed a reduced risk among those homozygous for the Arg399Gln XRCC1 variant polymorphism compared with those with one or two wild-type alleles (odds ratio 0.6, 95% confidence interval 0.4-1.0). There was no indication of a gene-environment interaction between cigarette smoking and the variant genotype. Our data are consistent with a potential role of the XRCC1 Arg399Gln polymorphism in bladder cancer susceptibility and further suggest that there may be DNA lesions important in bladder carcinogenesis, repaired by the base excision repair mechanism, that are not directly associated with tobacco smoking.

Footnotes

Grant support: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, NIH grants ES00002, 5 P42 ES05947, and ES07373 and National Cancer Institute, NIH grant CA57494, CA82354.
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.
- Accepted March 25, 2004.
- Received July 21, 2003.
- Revision received March 17, 2004.