Associations of CXCL1 gene 5’UTR variations with ovarian cancer

BACKGROUND: There are about 2.4 hundred thousand new cases and 1.5 hundred thousand deaths of ovarian cancer (OC) annually in the world. Chronic inflammation is a risk factor for OC. C-X-C motif chemokine ligand 1 (CXCL1) defects may facilitate inflammation and transactivate EGFR in ovarian cancer, but the precise haplotypes associated with the potential diseases remained largely unknown. In this work, we characterized CXCL1 gene variations to elucidate their possible associations with OC. METHODS: We analyzed the CXCL1 gene for 300 OC patients with 400 healthy participants as controls. The statistical analyses and Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium tests of the patients and control populations were conducted using the SPSS software (version 19.0) and Plink (version 1.9). RESULTS: The variants rs11547681, rs201090116, rs199791199, rs181868085, rs4074 and rs1814092 within or near the CXCL1 gene were characterized. The genetic heterozygosity of rs11547681 and rs4074 was very high. Statistical analysis showed that the variant rs11547681 in the gene was closely associated with the risk of OC in the Chinese Han population, although this variant was not associated with FIGO stages or pathological grades of the patients. CONCLUSIONS: Rs11547681 in CXCL1 gene was associated with the risk of OC in the Chinese Han population.