Role of p53 and p21 polymorphisms in the risk of cervical cancer among Chinese women

The objective of this study was to identify whether polymorphic variants of p53 at codon 72 and p21 at codon 31 were associated with increased risk for cervical cancer, either independently or jointly, among Chinese women from southern Han. We genotyped p53 codon 72 and p21 codon 31 polymorphisms of peripheral blood DNA from 104 cervical cancer patients and 160 controls. Genotyping was confirmed by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) and direct DNA sequencing. We observed an increased risk of cervical cancer associated with the p53 Arg/Arg (OR, 2.25; 95% CI, 1.11-4.54) or p21 Ser/Ser (OR, 2.09; 95% CI, 1.04-4.19) genotype, compared with the p53 Pro/Pro or p21 Arg/Arg genotype, respectively. In additional, interaction between these p53 and p21 polymorphisms increased the risk of cervical cancer in a multiplicative manner, with the OR being 3.96 (95% CI, 1.51-10.41) for subjects carrying both p53 Arg/Arg and p21 Ser/Ser genotypes. These findings suggest that there is a significant association between the genetic polymorphism of p53, p21, and the risk of cervical cancer among Chinese southern women, and there is a possible gene-gene interaction in the incidence of cervical cancer.