Angiotensin-converting enzyme insertion/deletion gene polymorphism in patients with laryngeal cancer

Objectives. The aim of this study was to compare the distribution of the angiotensin-con-verting enzyme (ACE) I/D polymorphism between patients with laryngeal cancer (LC) and a control group and to examine the distribution of this polymorphism with clinical param-eters related to LC.Methods. We enrolled 44 LC patients and 61 healthy controls. The ACE I/D polymorphism was genotyped with the PCR-RFLP method. The distribution of ACE genotypes (II, ID, and DD) and alleles (I or D) was evaluated with Pearson's chi-square test, and logistic regres-sion analysis was performed for statistically significant parameters. Results. There was no significant difference in ACE genotypes and alleles between LC patients and controls (p = 0.079 and p = 0.068, respectively). Among clinical parameters re-lated to LC (extension of tumour, node metastasis, tumour stage and tumour location), only the presence of node metastasis was found to be significant in terms of ACE DD genotype (p = 0.137, p = 0.031, p = 0.147, p = 0.321 respectively). In the logistic regression analysis, the ACE DD genotype was increased 8.3 fold in nodal metastases.Conclusions. The findings of the study suggest that ACE genotypes and alleles do not affect the prevalence of LC, but the DD genotype of ACE polymorphism may increase the risk of lymph node metastasis in LC patients.