Cytochrome P450 17 (CYP17) gene polymorphism (rs743572) and cervical cancer risk in women of rural Maharashtra

Background: Last few decades, numerous studies all over the world revealed the association of genetic polymorphism in cytochrome P450 (CYP17) gene with risk of multiple cancers, but observed no evidences in case of cervical cancer risk. Therefore, in this study we decided to evaluate whether the CYP117 rs743572 SNP was associated with cervical cancer susceptibility in the women of rural population of Maharashtra. Materials & methods: In this case-control study, the association of the polymorphism in CYP17 gene was studied by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism method. The study was conducted among 350 clinically confirmed cervical cancer patients and 350 healthy volunteers in a population of south-western Maharashtra. The Odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) and p-value were evaluated to get the level of association, where p <= 0.0001 was considered as statistically significant. Results: After the analysis of rs743572 SNP of CYP17, we noticed that A2/A2 variant allele possessed a significantly elevated risk (OR = 3.22; 95% CI: 1.98-5.24; p < 0.0001) of cervical cancer in studied women population residing in rural south western Maharashtra. The genotypic distribution of A1/A2 heterozygote allele showed significant increased risk (OR = 4.45 95% CI = 2.02-9.83; p = 0.0002) when correlated with the increased age of cancer occurrence as compared to marginal risk at lower age (OR = 2.13 95% CI = 1.27-3.59; p = 0.004). Conclusion: The findings from this study supported that rs743572 SNP of CYP17 increased the risk of cervical cancer in the studied rural women population.