Research Article Association of HLA-G 14-base pair insertion/deletion polymorphism with breast cancer in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Human leukocyte antigen-G (HLA-G) has been associated with various immune diseases, including malignancies. The 14-base pair (bp) insertion/deletion (indel) polymorphism (rs16375) in exon 8 of the 3′ untranslated region (3′ UTR) of the HLA-G gene has been reported to influence HLA-G protein expression. We investigated the relationship between the 14-bp indel polymorphism and the occurrence of breast cancer in a Saudi population. The HLA-G 14-bp polymorphism was typed by PCR in 52 patients with breast cancer and 62 healthy control Saudi women. There was a highly significant association between the occurrence of breast cancer and the del allele (OR = 3.75; P < 0.001) and the del/del genotype (OR = 4.96; P < 0.001). Conversely, the 14-bp ins allele and ins/ins genotype exhibited protective effects against breast cancer (P < 0.00001). Remarkably, the genotype 14-bp ins/ins was missing among all patients. This is the first report showing a strong association between HLA-G 14-bp polymorphism and breast cancer in the Saudi population. The results are in agreement with previous reports showing similar association of HLA-G and breast cancer in other populations.

HLA-G 14-bp Insertion /Deletion (In/Del) Polymorphism in Breast Cancer Iraqi Arabian women

“…Concerning the allelic frequency, also no significant difference was found between the patients and control groups at HLA-G 14bp ins/del (22) . The present results were disagree with AL-Omar and Mansour (23) who showed a high significant increase between the 14-bp del allele and occurrence of breast cancer, also our results disagree with the Tunisian results which confirmed the elevation of deletion allele frequencies among the patients in comparison with the control group and conferred a risk to breast cancer development (52% Vs 45%) (24) . These discrepancies in the results may be associated with the genetic variations between various ethnic people investigated, geographic climate, daily lifestyle, ethnic diversity and dietary habits (8) .…”