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Background: Accumulative evidence suggests that low folate intake is associated with increased risk of breast cancer. Polymorphisms in genes involved in folate metabolism may influence DNA methylation, nucleotide synthesis, and thus individual susceptibility to cancer. Thymidylate synthase (TYMS) is a key enzyme that participates in folate metabolism and catalyzes the conversion of dUMP to dTMP in the process of DNA synthesis. Two potentially functional polymorphisms [a 28-bp tandem repeat in the TYMS 5'-untranslated enhanced region (TSER) and a 6-bp deletion/insertion in the TYMS 3'-untranslated region (TS 3'-UTR)] were suggested to be correlated with alteration of thymidylate synthase expression and associated with cancer risk. Methods: To test the hypothesis that polymorphisms of the TYMS gene are associated with risk of breast cancer, we genotyped these two polymorphisms in a case-control study of 432 incident cases with invasive breast cancer and 473 cancer-free controls in a Chinese population. Results: We found that the distribution of TS3'-UTR (1494del6) genotype frequencies were significantly different between the cases and controls (P = 0.026). Compared with the TS3'-UTR del6/del6 wild-type genotype, a significantly reduced risk was associated with the ins6/ins6 homozygous variant genotype (adjusted OR = 0.58, 95% CI = 0.35-0.97) but not the del6/ins6 genotype (OR = 1.09, 95% CI = 0.82-1.46). Furthermore, breast cancer risks associated with the TS3'-UTR del6/del6 genotype were more evident in older women, postmenopausal subjects, individuals with a younger age at first-live birth and individuals with an older age at menarche. However, there was no evidence for an association between the TSER polymorphism and breast cancer risks. Conclusion: These findings suggest that the TS3'-UTR del6 polymorphism may play a role in the etiology of breast cancer. Further larger population-based studies as well as functional evaluation of the variants are warranted to confirm our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The nucleotide excision repair (NER) protein, xeroderma pigmentosum C (XPC), participates in recognizing DNA lesions and initiating DNA repair in response to DNA damage. Because mutations in XPC cause a high risk of cancer in XP patients, we hypothesized that inherited sequence variations in XPC may alter DNA repair and thus susceptibility to cancer., Methods: In this hospital-based case-control study, we investigated five XPC tagging, common single nucleotide polymorphisms (tagging SNPs) in 1,010 patients with newly diagnosed lung cancer and 1,011 matched cancer free controls in a Chinese population., Results: In individual tagging SNP analysis, we found that rs3731055AG+AA variant genotypes were associated with a significantly decreased risk of lung adenocarcinoma [adjusted odds ratio (OR), 0.71; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.56-0.90] but an increased risk of small cell carcinomas [adjusted OR, 1.79; 95% CI, 1.05-3.07]. Furthermore, we found that haplotype ACCCA was associated with a decreased risk of lung adenocarcinoma [OR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.62-0.97] but an increased risk of small cell carcinomas [OR, 1.68; 95% CI, 1.04-2.71], which reflected the presence of rs3731055A allele in this haplotype. Further stratified analysis revealed that the protective effect of rs3731055AG+AA on risk of lung adenocarcinoma was more evident among young subjects (age < or= 60) and never smokers., Conclusion: These results suggest that inherited sequence variations in XPC may modulate risk of lung cancer, especially lung adenocarcinoma, in Chinese populations. However, these findings need to be verified in larger confirmatory studies with more comprehensively selected tagging SNPs.