Background: Histone deacetylases (HDACs) have been reported to be poor prognostic indicators in patients with cancer. However, no data are available for the role of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) of class I HDAC in hepato-cellular carcinoma (HCC). Therefore, we investigated the association of class I HDAC isoforms genomic polymorphisms with risk of HCC and tumor recurrence following liver transplantation (LT).
Methods: One hundred and ninety-six Chinese subjects consisting of 97 HCC patients and 99 controls were enrolled in this study. Nine polymorphisms of the HDAC1, HDAC2, and HDAC3 gene (rs2530223, rs1741981, rs2547547, rs13204445, rs6568819, rs10499080, rs11741808, rs2475631, rs11391) were examined using Applied Biosystems SNaP-Shot and TaqMan technology.
Results: We found no significant difference in genotype frequencies between the HCC cases and controls. In terms of tumor recurrence following LT, patients carrying the T allele of HDAC1 SNP rs1741981 showed a favorable outcome for recurrence free survival when compared with patients homozygous for CC. In addition, the same significant trend was observed in HDAC3 SNP rs2547547. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that the combination of the T variant allele (CT+TT) of HDAC1 SNP rs1741981 and the homozygous TT variant allele of HDAC3 SNP rs2547547 was the most favorable prognostic factor. The risk for postoperative tumor recurrence was about 2.2-fold lower for patients with this genotype combination compared with carriers of the HDAC1 SNP rs1741981 CC and HDAC3 SNP rs2547547 CT genotype combination (hazard ratio: 2.235, p=0.003).
Conclusions: Our data suggest that combined analysis of HDAC1 SNP rs1741981 and HDAC3 SNP rs2547547 may be a potential genetic marker for HCC recurrence in LT patients.