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

Abstract

Apolipoprotein E (ApoE) is an important secretory glycoprotein, and also a ligand for LDL receptors and ApoE receptors. It is involved in lipid transport and catabolism, nerve regeneration, immune system regulation, and cell proliferation. Moreover, both the causative and protective effects of APOE polymorphic variants and alleles have been correlated with several diseases, including cancer types such as gastric cancer. However, to the best of our knowledge, no data are available describing the association between gastric cancer and APOE polymorphisms in the Turkish population. In this context, this study was conducted to evaluate the association between the genotypes of APOE and the risk of gastric cancer and also to demonstrate the allele frequencies and genotype distributions of APOE gene in a hospital-based Turkish population with gastric cancer. A total of 59 patients with gastric cancer and 200 healthy controls were included in this study. Results showed the absence of any statistically significant association between APOE gene polymorphisms and the risk of gastric cancer (χ2 =2.711, p=0.744), which could possibly be due to the small sample size of our study. Therefore, further investigations such as expression studies and meta-analysis comprising larger sample size and detailed demographic data are necessary to identify the alleles of APOE gene associated with the risk of gastric cancer.