Androgen receptor length polymorphism associated with prostate cancer risk in Hispanic men.
OBJECTIVE
The transcriptional activation domain of the androgen receptor gene includes a CAG repeat length polymorphism. A smaller number of repeats is reported to increase the risk of prostate cancer. We investigated the association of CAG repeat length and the risk of prostate cancer in a case-control study of Hispanic men.


METHODS
To estimate the magnitude of the association of repeat length with prostate cancer risk, samples from 82 white patients of Hispanic origin (Hispanic) with prostate cancer and 145 Hispanic controls were genotyped. To determine the allelic distribution of repeats by race/ethnicity we genotyped 132 black men, 163 white men of nonHispanic origin (white) and 175 Hispanic men with no family history of prostate cancer, and performed pairwise comparison.


RESULTS
In the case-control study of Hispanic men with a repeat length of 18 or less versus greater than 18 we found an approximately 3-fold increased risk of prostate cancer (OR 2.7, 95% CI 1.21 to 6.01, t test p = 0.013, age adjusted OR 3.03, 95% CI 1.27 to 7.26). The distribution of alleles differed significantly by race/ethnicity. The mean prevalence of short CAG repeat alleles plus or minus SD was higher in black than in white men (19.8 +/- 3.2 versus 21.8 +/- 2.7, t test p <0.0001) and lower in Hispanic men than in other white men (22.7 +/- 3.3, t test p = 0.014).


CONCLUSIONS
To our knowledge, our study represents the first case-control study of the androgen receptor gene in a Hispanic population and provides evidence of the increased prostate cancer risk associated with short CAG repeats. Our results suggest that short CAG repeats are associated with an increased prostate cancer risk in Hispanic men.
Balic
Ivana
I
Department of Cellular and Structural Biology, University of Texas Health Science Center-San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, USA.
Graham
Stanley T
ST
Troyer
Dean A
DA
Higgins
Betsy A
BA
Pollock
Brad H
BH
Johnson-Pais
Teresa L
TL
Thompson
Ian M
IM
Leach
Robin J
RJ
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000483:Alleles; D044383:Black People / Q000235:genetics; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005787:Gene Frequency / Q000235:genetics; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease / Q000235:genetics; D006630:Hispanic or Latino / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012150:Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length; D011446:Prospective Studies; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics*; D011944:Receptors, Androgen / Q000235:genetics*; D012306:Risk; D018911:Trinucleotide Repeats; D044465:White People / Q000235:genetics
D011944:Receptors, Androgen