ASSOCIATION BETWEEN THE UROKINASE PLASMINOGEN ACTIVATION SYSTEM POLYMORPHISMS AND NSCLC IN CHINESE POPULATION

Jianzhong Gu¹, Yingying Shen¹, Binyue Xu², Yu Zhan², Yong Guo^{1, *}

¹The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, P.R. China - ²Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, P.R. China

Aim: To evaluate the influence of urokinase plasminogen activation (uPA) and uPAR gene polymorphisms on susceptibility to non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC).

Methods: A total of 500 NSCLC patients and 500 healthy controls were recruited and matched for age and gender. The SNPs distributed in the uPA and uPAR gene were selected for genotyping. The association between genotype and NSCLC risk was evaluated by computing the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confience interval (CI) using multivariate unconditional logistic regression analyses.

Results: Patients with the uPAR rs344781 T allele had a reduced risk of developing squamous-cell carcinomas (SCCs) (OR=0.742; 95%CI=0.579–0.950; P=0.0176), especially male patients (OR=0.722; 95%CI=0.546–0.954; P=0.0219). In addition, the uPAR rs344781 C/C allele homozygote was associated with an increased risk of SCC in patients (OR=1.713; 95%CI=1.145–2.563; P=0.0083). However, neither allele frequencies nor genotype frequencies in uPA rs4065 were associated with NSCLC (P>0.05).

Conclusions: The results revealed that the genetic polymorphisms of uPAR rs344781 were associated with SCC susceptibility.