No association between dinucleotide repeat polymorphism in intron 1 of the epidermal growth factor receptor gene EGFR and risk of lung cancer

The tyrosine kinase receptor EGFR pathway is one of the oncogenic signaling cascades involved in lung cancer, mediating the epidermal growth factor receptor gene EGFR. First-intron polymorphisms with greater numbers of CA dinucleotide repeats tend to downregulate EGFR expression, which suggests that this polymorphism may modulate susceptibility to lung cancer. The present hospital-based case-control study evaluated the possible association of CA repeat polymorphism in the EGFR gene with risk of lung cancer in a Korean population. A bimodal pattern appeared, with a frequency of 57.1% for 20 CA repeats and 18.6% for 16 CA repeats. There was, however, no significant difference in distribution of allele genotypes between all lung cancer cases and the controls, nor among histological types for the cases.