Multiple single nucleotide polymorphisms on human chromosome 19q13.2-3 associate with risk of Basal cell carcinoma

In this paper, we present evidence that alleles of several polymorphisms in the chromosomal region 19q13.2-3, encompassing the genes RAI and XPD, are associated with occurrence of basal cell carcinoma in Caucasian Americans. The association of one of these, RAI-intron1, is sufficiently strong to make mass significance unlikely (P = 0.004, chi(2)). We interpret our combined data to indicate that a specific haplotype partly defined by the alleles of three single nucleotide polymorphisms, RAI intron1(G), RAI exon6(T), and XPD exon 6(C), is associated with a protective gene variant in a region spanning from XPD to ERCC1.