The androgen receptor cytosine-adenine-guanine repeat length contributes to the development of epithelial ovarian cancer

// Xiangrui Meng 1 , Peng Lu 2, * , Zhi Chu 3 , Qingxia Fan 1 1 Department of Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zheng Zhou, People's Republic of China 2 Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, People's Hospital of Zhengzhou, Zheng Zhou, People's Republic of China 3 General Hospital, Jinan Military Command, Jinan, Shandong Province, People's Republic of China * Co-first author Correspondence to: Qingxia Fan, e-mail: fan_qingxia@126.com Keywords: ovarian cancer, AR, CAG, repeat, polymorphism Received: June 17, 2015 Accepted: October 08, 2015 Published: October 20, 2015 ABSTRACT Ovarian cancer is the main cause of death among women with gynecological malignancies. Androgen and its receptors play an important role in ovarian cancer pathogenesis. Here, We aim to evaluate the relationship between AR CAG and GGN repeat length polymorphisms and Epithelial Ovarian Cancer (EOC) risk in a two-stage, case-control study among Chinese women. The repeat length was analyzed as a categorical variable for CAG_A and GGN_A (average allele), CAG-S and GGN_S (shorter allele), CAG-L and GGN_L (longer allele), respectively. The median value of the repeat length among the controls was used as the cutoff point. Women with longer AR CAG repeats had a decreased risk of developing EOC. The results was replicated in an independent samples. Compared to those with shorter (