Association of hepsin gene variants with prostate cancer risk and prognosis.
BACKGROUND
Hepsin (HPN) is one of the most consistently overexpressed genes in prostate cancer and there is some evidence supporting an association between HPN gene variants and prostate cancer risk. We report results from a population-based case-control genetic association study for six tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (tagSNPs) in the HPN gene.


METHODS
Prostate cancer risk was estimated using adjusted unconditional logistic regression in 1,401 incident prostate cancer cases diagnosed in 1993 through 1996 or 2002 through 2005 and 1,351 age-matched controls. Risks of disease recurrence/progression and prostate cancer-specific mortality were estimated using Cox proportional hazards (PH) regression in 437 cases with long-term follow-up.


RESULTS
There were 135 recurrence/progression events and 57 cases who died of prostate cancer. Contrary to some earlier studies, we found no evidence of altered risk of developing prostate cancer overall or when clinical measures of tumor aggressiveness were considered for any of the tagSNPs, assessed either individually or by haplotypes. There was no evidence of altered risks of tumor recurrence/progression or prostate cancer death associated with variants in the HPN gene.


CONCLUSIONS
Germline genetic variation of HPN does not seem to contribute to risk of prostate cancer or prognosis.
Holt
Sarah K
SK
Division of Public Health Sciences, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington 98109, USA. skholt@fhcrc.org
Kwon
Erika M
EM
Lin
Daniel W
DW
Ostrander
Elaine A
EA
Stanford
Janet L
JL
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000483:Alleles; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D056726:Genetic Association Studies; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D014644:Genetic Variation; D006239:Haplotypes; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide / Q000235:genetics; D011379:Prognosis; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D018570:Risk Assessment; D018426:SEER Program; D012697:Serine Endopeptidases / Q000235:genetics*
D012697:Serine Endopeptidases; C055645:hepsin