Genetic variation in PLCE1 is associated with gastric cancer survival in a Chinese population

Two genome-wide association studies on gastric cancer showed a previously unknown gastric cancer susceptible locus in PLCE1 at 10q23. We hypothesized that the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs2274223 A/G is associated with the survival rate of gastric cancer.

We genotyped the above SNP in 940 gastric cancer patients to investigate the association between the polymorphism and gastric cancer survival by the TaqMan method.

We found that patients carrying PLCE1 rs2274223 AA genotype survived for a significantly shorter time than those carrying the AG and GG genotypes (log-rank P = 0.046). This significance was enhanced in the dominant model (AA vs. AG/GG, log-rank P = 0.014). Multivariate Cox regression analyses showed that the AG/GG genotypes were associated with a significantly decreased risk of death from gastric cancer [adjusted hazard ratio (HR) = 0.79, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.65-0.95]. Most of stratification analysis did not find an enhanced association between the same genotype and prognosis, except for patients with TNM stage III disease (HR = 0.63, 95% CI = 0.48-0.83).

Our findings showed that the PLCE1 SNP rs2274223 was associated with significantly improved gastric cancer survival in a Chinese population. Further functional studies are needed to validate our results.