p53 polymorphism at codon 72 is not a risk factor for cervical carcinogenesis in central Italy

Recently Storey et al. showed that p53 polymorphism at codon 72 was related to cervical cancer. This polymorphism encodes either arginine (p53Arg) or proline (p53Pro). p53Arg was found to be more susceptible than p53Pro to E6-mediated degradation. Many studies were performed but conclusions are controversial. In this paper, we report our results from 80 women of central Italy, 30 patients showing High-grade Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia or squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and 50 healthy women of the same age. The polymorphism was examined using the Storey's procedure, a molecular method, from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded biopsies (patients) and from cytological oral-samples (controls). The distribution of the genotypes among the cases was 27% heterozygous, 27% p53Pro-homozygous and 46% p53Arg-homozygous, while among the controls it was 52%, 2% and 46%, respectively. There was not an increased risk of SCC associated with p53Arg-homozygous; indeed there is a tendency for the contrary (odds ratio, 0.06; 99.4% confidence interval, 0.006-0.63; p = 0.019). Considering: 1) the biological characteristics of p53Pro in vitro; 2) the DNA quality, from formalin-fixed tissue, of our patients; and 3) the small number of samples performed in our study, we can only confirm that p53Pro is not a risk factor in vivo for cervical carcinogenesis in central Italy.