The human homologue of the yeast OGG1 gene, hOGG1, has been cloned, and its genetic structure has been determined. Several polymorphisms in the hOGG1 gene were detected in the Japanese populations, and among them, the Ser-Cys polymorphism at codon 326 has been shown to have a functional difference in complementation of mutant Escherichia coli that is defective in the repair of 8-hydroxyguanine. Activity in the repair of 8-hydroxyguanine is greater in hOGG1-Ser326 protein than in hOGG1(326) protein. Because many environmental carcinogens produce 8-hydroxyguanine residue and mismatching to this modified base potentially causes oncogenic mutations, the capacity to repair these lesions can be involved in cancer susceptibility in human beings. We, therefore, examined allele distributions of the Ser326Cys polymorphism in a case-control study of male lung cancer in Okinawa. The analyses based on 241 cases and 197 hospital controls disclosed the following findings. (a) Those with the Cys/Cys genotype were at an increased risk of squamous cell carcinoma and nonadenocarcinoma compared to those with the Ser/Cys and those with the Ser/Ser genotypes combined. The odds ratios adjusted for age and smoking history were 3.01 (95% confidence interval, 1.33-6.83) and 2.18 (95% confidence interval, 1.05-4.54), respectively. (b) The odds ratios for other histological subtypes of lung cancer or those in total were not significant. Those for Cys/Cys or Ser/Cys genotype against Ser/Ser did not reach statistical significance in any cell type. (c) The distributions of this polymorphism varied for different populations (Chinese, Japanese, Micronesians, Melanesians, Hungarians, and Australian Caucasians), with much less prevalence of Cys allele in the latter three populations. Although our sample size was limited, these results indicate that the Ser326Cys variant may be related to squamous cell lung cancer susceptibility. The Cys/Cys genotype appears to be more susceptible to squamous cell carcinoma, although the risk is less than that previously reported to be associated with the CYP1A1 gene. Further studies are needed to assess the importance of the interpopulation variation to cancer susceptibility.