Impact of multiple Alcohol Dehydrogenase gene polymorphisms on risk of laryngeal, esophageal, gastric and colorectal cancers in Chinese Han population

Alcohol intake is positively associated with the risk of upper aerodigestive tract (UADT) cancers; but its effect on gastric or colorectal cancer is controversial. Previous study had identified several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of Alcohol Dehydrogenase (ADH) genes associated with UADT cancers in European and Japanese populations. We sought to determine if these SNPs associated with laryngeal, esophageal, gastric or colorectal cancer in Chinese population. We conducted a case-control study among 1577 cases and 1013 healthy controls from northwest China. Five SNPs associated with UADT cancers risk were selected from previous genome-wide association studies and genotyped using Sequenom Mass-ARRAY technology. Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated by unconditional logistic regression adjusting for age and gender. We identified that the minor alleles of rs1789924 and rs971074 were associated with decreased risk of laryngeal cancer (OR = 0.311; 95% CI = 0.161-0.602; P < 0.001) and esophagus cancer (OR = 0.711; 95% CI = 0.526-0.962; P = 0.027) in allelic model analysis, respectively. In the genetic model analysis, we found the “C/T” genotype of rs1789924 was associated with decreased laryngeal cancer risk in codominant model (P = 0.046) and overdominant model (P = 0.013); the “C/T-T/T” genotype of rs1789924 was associated with reduced risk of laryngeal cancer under dominant model (P = 0.013). Additionally, none of the SNPs was associated with gastric or colorectal cancer in our study. Our data shed new light on the association between ADH SNPs and respiratory and digestive tract cancers susceptibility in the Han Chinese population.