Metrics details. Sporadic colorectal cancers CRC are multifactorial diseases resulting from the combined effects of numerous genetic, environmental and behavioral risk factors. Genetic association studies have suggested low-penetrance alleles of extremely varied genes to be involved in susceptibility to CRC in Caucasian populations. Through a large genetic association study based on patients with sporadic CRC and controls, we tested a panel of these low-penetrance alleles to find out whether they could determine "genotypic profiles" at risk for CRC among individuals of the French population.
We examined 52 polymorphisms of 35 genes β drawn from inflammation, xenobiotic detoxification, one-carbon, insulin signaling, and DNA repair pathways β for their possible contribution to colorectal carcinogenesis.
The risk of cancer associated with these polymorphisms was assessed by calculation of odds ratios OR using multivariate analyses and logistic regression. Whereas all these polymorphisms had previously been found to be associated with CRC risk, especially in Caucasian populations, we were able to replicate the association for only five of them.
GlyGly , IL8 c. HisHis , were associated with a decrease in CRC risk. Further analyses highlighted genotypic combinations having a greater predisposing effect on CRC OR 1.
Peer Review reports. As in most Western countries, colorectal cancer CRC is a major public health issue in France, where it is the second most common cause of death from cancer among adults [ 1 ]. Unfortunately, CRC diagnosis is often made at too late a stage and this induces a dismal prognosis, emphasizing the need for prevention and early diagnostic tools [ 2 ]. The development of such tools is, nonetheless, highly dependent on the form of cancer being screened.
