EPID-19ASSOCIATION STUDY BETWEEN HFE POLYMORPHISMS AND SURVIVAL OF GLIOBLASTOMA PATIENTS IN TCGA DATABASE

Abstract

The HFE protein is involved in iron metabolism. There are two (H63D and C282Y) HFE polymorphisms. These HFE polymorphisms have been associated with increased risk in a number of cancers. Previously, we reported gender affects H63D or C282Y glioblastoma (GBM) patients' overall survival. To confirm our finding in a bigger sample size, we analyzed the frequency of HFE genotype and survival of GBM patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. There were 329 GBM samples data available for HFE genotype. Among 329 samples, 296 samples have both HFE genotype data and clinical information. The 296 samples consist of 264 White, 6 Asian, 18 Black, and 8 unknown. H63D and C282Y HFE polymorphisms are more common in Caucasians than other ethnicities, thus we used 264 samples (167 male and 97 female) data in the present study. The frequency of H63D and C282Y is approximately 26.5% (24.2% heterozygote and 2.3% homozygote) and 7.6% (6.8% heterozygote and 0.8% homozygote). This rate is similar with that for the general Caucasian population reported in the literature. The Kaplan-Meier survive curve for the 264 GBM samples revealed no difference between WT HFE and H63D and C282Y GBM patients. In addition, there is no difference in the survival of male/female GBM patients based on HFE genotype. To exclude any possibility of regional difference in survival/HFE genotype in our data analysis, we used single sample collection site data (n = 100) from 264 samples as well. However, we still did not observe any statistical difference between HFE genotype and overall survival including gender effect. In conclusion, HFE polymorphisms do not impact GBM patient's survival in TCGA data set of GBM. The present data and our previous data suggest that environment factors may affect the difference of survival length in GBM patients with HFE mutations.