Article genetic variation in the vascular endothelial growth factor (Vegfa) gene at rs13207351 is associated with overall survival of patients with head and neck cancer

Head and neck cancer (HNC) is a significantly heterogeneous disease and includes ma-lignancies arising from different anatomical sites, such as nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) and laryn-geal cancer (LC). In the current study, polymorphisms located in angiogenesis‐ and apoptosis‐re-lated genes (VEGFA, FAS, EDNRA and NBS1) were evaluated regarding their clinical significance in HNC patients. In total, 333 HNC patients were enrolled in this study and 34 variants located on the aforementioned genes were genotyped via Sanger sequencing. LC patients, homozygous A for VEGFA rs13207351, had shorter overall survival (OS) as opposed to homozygous G (Hazard ratio (HR) = 2.06, Wald’s p = 0.017) upon adjustment for age, disease stage, and surgery. Following the dominant model, LC patients carrying the A allele had a marginally significantly higher risk for death (HR = 1.72, p = 0.059). NPC patients heterozygous (CT) for FAS rs2234768 had a marginal but significantly higher risk of death compared to those with homozygosity for the T allele (HR = 2.22, p = 0.056). In conclusion, rs13207351 (VEGFA) and rs2234768 (FAS) polymorphisms seem to have prognostic significance in HNC, with VEGFA rs13207351 showing the most promise in this subgroup of LC patients. © 2021 by the authors. Li-censee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.