Aim: The aim was to evaluate the influence of interleukin (IL)-4-590 C/T gene polymorphism in the susceptibility to nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC), whether the environment also affects genetic polymorphisms.
Materials and methods: A case-control study was conducted with 500 NSCLC patients and 500 healthy controls, matched on age and gender. The single nucleotide polymorphisms distributed in IL-4 gene were selected for genotyping. The association between genotype and NSCLC risk was evaluated by computing the odds ratio and 95% confidence interval with multivariate unconditional logistic regression analyses.
Results: The allele frequencies were not associated with NSCLC regardless of histological type or gender. The genotype distributions were similar between cases and controls, between adenocarcinoma patients and controls, and between male squamous-cell carcinoma (SCC) patients and male controls. However, genotype (C/C + C/T) frequencies polymorphism of rs2243250 were different between female SCC patients and female controls.
Conclusions: These results suggest that environmental agents might have the potential for interacting with human genetic polymorphisms in NSCLC. IL-4-590 C/T polymorphism (C/C + C/T frequencies) may be a potential susceptibility marker for female SCC patients in China.