ABSTRACT
<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To study the relationship between two potential functional polymorphisms in exon 2 of the p73 gene and the susceptibility of lung cancer.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Genotypes were determined by polymerase chain reaction-single stand conformation polymorphism (PCR-SSCP) method in 425 histologically-confirmed lung cancer cases and 588 cancer-free controls, frequency-matched by age and sex.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The two polymorphisms were in complete linkage disequilibrium and the frequencies of variant p73 AT haplotype (A4T14) were less commonly seen in the cases (0.225) than in the controls (0.287) (P = 0.0018). Compared with the p73 GC/GC homozygotes, both the AT/AT variant homozygotes and GC/AT heterozygotes were associated with a significantly decreased risk [adjusted odds ratio (OR) = 0.45, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.26 - 0.80 and OR = 0.70, 95% CI = 0.53-0.92, respectively].</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>These results suggested that this p73 dinucleotide polymorphism might have had a role to play in the susceptibility of lung cancer.</p>