Background: Gastric cancer as the 3rd most common malignancy in Iran, accounts for
�50% of all GI cancers who cause 55% of all cancer-related deaths in Iran. The rates of gastric cancer reported from Ardabil province, Iran, are among the highest in the
world. Upper gastrointestinal cancer accounts for more than 50% of all cancer deaths
in this area. The angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) plays an important role not
only in the regulation of vascular homeostasis but also in stimulation of hematopoiesis.
The insertion/deletion polymorphism of ACE gene has recently been linked to the
pathogenesis and progression of human cancers. We aimed to evaluate the association
between insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism of the ACE gene and susceptibility to
gastric cancer in our province.
Methods: We enrolled 97 patients with gastric cancer and 97 age- and sex-matched
healthy control participants. This length polymorphism was revealed by conventional
PCR method on DNA extracted from peripheral blood.
Results: Among cases, there were 18.6% homozygous for II, 26.8% homozygous for
DD, and the remaining 54.6% were ID. The resulted Controls data were 19.2%
homozygous for II, 46.5% homozygous for DD, and 34.3% for ID. Any significant
correlations were not found between cases and controls (p=0.47) or pathologic values
in case group.
Conclusion: Finding any correlation in this investigation could results from the
reported relationships between the noted polymorphism and some disorders such as
Diabetes which were undetected in some of our participants. But, theoretically this
length polymorphism seems to offer the susceptibility to Gastric cancer
