Risk of malignant pleural mesothelioma and polymorphisms in genes involved in the genome stability and xenobiotics metabolism

Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is a rare and aggressive cancer mostly attributable to asbestos exposure. Many polymorphic genes encoding for xenobiotic and oxidative metabolism enzymes (XME) or involved in genome stability (GS) can modulate individual MPM risk in exposed populations. An association study was carried out in a case-control setting including 119 MPM patients and two groups of referent subjects (104 with and 695 without documented asbestos exposure). Forty-eight polymorphisms in XME genes and 75 in GS-genes were evaluated. Statistical analysis revealed some significant associations of studied polymorphisms with MPM risk, but most of them disappeared after applying Bonferroni correction (new threshold for statistical significance: p=4.07 x 10(-4)). On the other hand, the nucleotidic change 282C>T within NAT2 held the statistical significance (OR=3.54; 95% CI 1.75-7.16; p=0.0002), reinforcing existing evidences that describe genetic polymorphisms of NAT2 possibly involved in the etiology of the MPM.