Monika Kmeťová-Sivoňová1, Marta Vilčková1, Svetlana Grobarčíková2, Jana Jurečeková1, Dušan Dobrota1, Ján Kliment2
Introduction and Aims: The tumour suppressor protein p53 and its downstream effector p21 are thought to play major roles in the development of human malignancy. Polymorphic variants of p53 and p21 genes have been associated with cancer susceptibility, but few studies have investigated their effect on prostate cancer risk. The purpose of this study was to detect three polymorphisms of the p53 (codon 72) and p21 genes (C98A, C70T), to assess their relationship and to evaluate the correlation between p53 and p21 polymorphisms and clinicopathological findings in prostate cancer. Material and Methods: We genotyped three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in p53 and p21 among 300 prostate cancer patients and 446 healthy controls by using PCR-RFLP (polymerase chain reaction restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis). Relative risk of prostate cancer for p53 and p21 genotypes was estimated using χ2 method. Results: We have found that each polymorphism individually was unrelated to prostate cancer risk, combination of the p53 codon 72 Arg/Pro and p21 C98A CA genotypes was associated with a significant 51 % decreased risk of prostate cancer (p < 0.05). We observed a significant decreased risk of prostate cancer associated with the p21 C98A CA genotype in patients with serum PSA levels ≥ 10 ng/ml in comparision with patients with wild type p21 C98A genotype and serum PSA levels ≤ 10 ng/ml (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Taken together, this is the first study to show that a combination of variant genotypes of p53 codon 72 and p21 C98A may modify prostate cancer risk.