Association of MicroRNA related single nucleotide polymorphisms 196A-2 and 499 with the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma in Egyptian patients

Background Many studies revealed that several micro RNA-SNPs (MIR-SNPs) act as genetic risk factors in development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in different populations either alone or with environmental risk factors. Objective To study the role of two hsa-miR (-196a-2 C > T rs11614913 and -499 A > G rs3746444) polymorphisms individually, with each other and with some environmental risk factors in HCC Egyptian patients. Subjects and methods This study is a retrospective study that was conducted on 2 groups; HCC group and control group each included 50 subjects. The polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism technique (PCR-RFLP) was performed for genotyping of the two pre MIR-SNPs. The relationships of polymorphisms with the HCC risk were estimated by conditional logistic regression analysis. Results HCC patients who carried the MIR-499 GG genotype had significantly increased HCC risk (p-value = 0.004) while, there was no significant association between MIR-196A2 gene polymorphism and HCC risk (p-value = 0.49). Moreover, there was a significant correlation between the interaction of MIR-SNPs-196A-2 and infection with HCV (p-value = 0.004). Conclusions MIR-SNP-499 might affect the susceptibility of Egyptians to HCC while, MIR-SNP-196A-2 may affect the HCC risk in Egyptians with HCV infection.