Assosation of the XRCC1 gene polymorhism with breast cancer risk in Kashmiri patients

X ray repair cross-complementing group 1 (XRCC1) plays an important role in base excision and single-strand break repair, as a scaffold protein that brings together proteins of the DNA repair complex, and appears to be a candidate for cancer risk. A common polymorphism (Arg→Gln) at codon 399 of the XRCC1 gene has been previously linked to functional changes of the gene product and risk of cancers. However, studies on the association between polymorphisms in this protein and cancer have yielded conflicting results. We evaluated the association between XRCC1 Arg399Gln polymorphism and breast cancer risk in the Kashmiri patients. Our study included total of 142 female subjects. In our case control study we genotyped 70 breast cancer (BC) patients and 72 controls for XRCC1 Arg399Gln polymorphisms by PCR RLFP technique.. It was found 22.8%of cases and 37.5%were homozygous for variant genotype with odd ratio OR 0.48 CI (0.18-1.25); P = 0.13 for Gln/Gln and OR=1.01 CI = (0.42-1.49); P= 0.985 for Arg/Gln. However OR was insignificant. It was observed that OR associated with Gln/Gln genotype are not modified for either above or below 45 years age (OR=0.72; CI = 0.18-2.74), (OR=0.28; 95% CI=0.06-1.20), however these results were statistically insignificant. Similar observation was found with respect to menopausal status (postmenopausal women OR=0.85; CI=0.19-3.72), (premenopausal women OR=0.35; CI= 0.09-0.29) as none of association reached statistical significance. Thus we did not find any association between Arg399Gln polymorphism and breast cancer risk among both pre-and post menopausal women