The association of polymorphisms in nucleotide excision repair genes with ovarian cancer susceptibility.

Nucleotide excision repair (NER), the core mechanism of DNA repair pathway, was commonly used to maintain genomic stability and prevent tumorigenesis. Previous investigations have demonstrated that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of NER pathway genes were associated with various types of cancer. However, there was no research elucidating the genetic association of entire NER pathway with ovarian cancer susceptibility. Therefore, we conducted genotyping for 17 SNPs of six NER core genes (, and ) in 89 ovarian cancer cases and 356 cancer-free controls. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to describe the strength of association. The result showed that both rs11615 and rs2228000 were significantly associated with reduced risk of ovarian cancer under dominant genetic model (adjusted OR = 0.35, 95% CI = 0.20-0.61, =0.0002 and adjusted OR = 0.49, 95% CI = 0.30-0.81, =0.005 respectively). In addition, rs2228001 and rs238406 had statistically significant association with the increased risk of ovarian cancer under dominant genetic model (adjusted OR = 1.72, 95% CI = 1.02-2.92, =0.043 and adjusted OR = 2.07, 95% CI = 1.07-4.01, =0.032 respectively). rs3212986 were related with the increased risk of ovarian cancer under recessive model (adjusted OR = 2.40, 95% CI = 1.30-4.44, =0.005). In conclusion, our results indicated that and might influence ovarian cancer susceptibility. Further research with large sample size is warranted to validate the reliability and accuracy of our results.