ABSTRACT
Various substances in cigarette smoke including nicotine have been shown to promote/induce cancer cell proliferation. Since cotinine has a longer half life and stability in the blood, it has become the preferred biomarker for cigarette smoking exposure. Seventy-three gastric cancer patients were included in this study. The tumor tissues were stained with H & E for pathological evaluation. The cotinine levels were measured in urine using a competitive ELISA. Tumors were 90% adenocarcinoma with 63% intestinal and 37% diffuse subtypes. Tumors were poorly (45.2%) or moderately differentiated (41.1%) and localized mainly (77%) in the upper part of stomach. The levels of cotinine were significantly different between smoker (283.83 ± 178.10 ng/mL) and non-smoker (39.28 ± 113.34 ng/mL) groups (p < 0.001). However, there is no-significant correlation between tumor characteristics and cotinine level in smoker patients. Cotinine level correlates with smoking in gastric patients, however, correlation with the tumor features has not been observed.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND/AIMS: Gastric cancer, as the fourth most frequent malignancy worldwide, has the highest rate among cancer-related disorders in Ardabil province, located in North-West Iran. Methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase is one of the cancer susceptibility genes with considerable polymorphisms. Methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase C677T leads to a decrease of about 30% in its product activity and is reported to have an effect on cancer susceptibility. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase C677T genotyping was carried out by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism on peripheral blood DNA from 76 gastric cancer patients and 91 healthy controls. The statistical significance was calculated by logistic regression analysis. RESULTS: The mean age was 64.2±11.1 and 62.1±9.8 years for cases and controls, respectively. Among tumors, 35.5% were diffuse type and others were intestinal. The frequency of genotypes was 61.8%, 32.9%, and 5.3% among cases and 45.1%, 50.6%, and 4.4% among controls for Ala/Ala, Ala/Val, and Val/Val, respectively. CT heterozygotes had lower susceptibility to gastric cancer (p=0.02). This relationship of significance was detected considering gender and age. CONCLUSIONS: It was found that T allele has a protective association with age in the Ardabil province.
