Association of a common genetic variant in prostate stem-cell antigen with gastric cancer susceptibility in a Korean population.

A recent genome wide association study (GWAS) indentified a significant association between rs2294008 (C > T) polymorphism in prostate stem-cell antigen (PSCA) and increased risk of gastric cancer in Japanese and Korean populations. The aim of this study was to determine whether rs2294008 polymorphism is associated with risk of gastric cancer in a Korean population. We conducted a large-scale case-control study of 3,245 gastric cancer patients and 1,700 controls. The frequencies of the CC, CT, and TT genotypes of rs2294008 polymorphism were 17.8%, 49.9%, and 32.3% in the gastric cancer patients; and 24.4%, 48.1%, and 27.5% in the controls, respectively. We found that the CT and TT genotypes were associated with a significantly increased risk of gastric cancer (OR(CT) = 1.50, 95% confidence intervals, 95% CI: 1.28-1.76; OR(TT) = 1.71, 95% CI: 1.43-2.04), compared with the CC genotype. Further, stratified by tumor location and histological type, the effect of the rs2294008 T allele was larger in cardia (OR(TT) = 2.62, 95% CI = 1.42-4.85) than non-cardia (OR(TT) = 1.67, 95% CI = 1.40-2.00), in diffuse-type (OR(TT) = 2.00, 95% CI: 1.55-2.59) than in intestinal-type (OR(TT) = 1.51, 95% CI: 1.22-1.86). Our study showed that rs2294008 in the PSCA gene was associated with increased risks of gastric cancer in a Korean population, suggests that rs2294008 might play an important role in gastric carcinogenesis.