Long non-coding RNA POLR2E gene polymorphisms increased the risk of prostate cancer in a sample of the Iranian population

The current study aimed to examine the impact of POLR2E rs1046040 and rs3787016 polymorphisms on prostate cancer (PCa) risk in a sample of southeast Iranian population. The present case-control study was performed on 178 patients with PCa and 180 benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Genotyping of the variants was done by mismatch PCR-RFLP. The findings showed that the rs3787016 C > T variant significantly increased the risk of PCa in codominant (OR = 1.84, 95% CI = 1.12-3.03, P = 0.018, CT vs CC), dominant (OR = 1.88, 95% CI = 1.63-3.05, P = 0.011, CT + TT vas CC) and allele (OR = 1.77, 95% CI = 1.52-2.72, P = 0.010, T vs C) inheritance model. Regarding rs1046040 C > T polymorphism, the findings revealed that the CT genotype significantly increased the risk of PCa compared to the CC genotype (OR = 1.60, 95% CI = 1.03-2.49, P = 0.043). Furthermore, rs3787016 CT/rs1046040 CC as well as rs3787016 CT/rs1046040 CT increased the risk of PCa compared to the CC/CC genotype (p = 0.029 and p = 0.014, respectively). Haplotype analysis proposed that rs3787016 T/rs1046040 C significantly increased the risk of PCa compared to C/C (p = 0.037). No significant association was observed between POLR2E variants and clinicopathological characteristics of PCa patients. In conclusion, the findings propose that POLR2E variants may be a risk factor for susceptibility to PCa in a sample of Iranian population.