Potential Effects of EGFR Exon 21 L858R Mutations in Lung Cancer

Objective: The mainly significant reason in the etiology of lung cancer is smoking, which is important in other environmental pollutants and genetic susceptibility. Lung cancer is separated two major groups as mainly non-small cell and small cell according to the growth rate, spread, timing of metastasis, response to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) constitutes the highest rate with 50-80% in gene mutations which are prognostic value in lung cancer. Many studies have shown that EGFR is overexpressed in lung cancer. In our study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between EGFR gene exon 21 L858R mutations in lung cancer. Material and Methods: Our sample consisted of a healthy group of 190 healthy volunteers with the same age and gender characteristics as the patient group of 178 patients who were diagnosed as lung cancer in the Mersin University Medical Faculty Oncology clinic. The DNAs were obtained according to the standard salt precipitation method. Mutation detection and genotyping analyzes were identified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analyzes. Results: Smoking was one of the other risk factors for lung cancer, 130 (68.33%) in the control group and 156 (87.5%) in the lung cancer group. 27 person of the lung cancer (15%) were female and 151 (85%) were male. In the control group, 92 people (48.33%) were in the wild genotype and 98 persons were in the mutant genotype (51.66%). In the lung cancer group 80 (45%) were wild-type and 98 (55%) were mutant genotypes. According to the histopathological types of lung cancer, EGFR-21 mutation heterozygous or homozygous carriers are proportionally compatible (p = 0.90). Conclusion: According to our findings, the EGFR-21 mutation is not associated with histopathological types of lung cancer.