Background/aims: Glucose-regulated protein 78 (GRP78), being a major chaperone, is implicated in the progression of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and elevated GRP78 levels in tissues had been known to be related with poor prognosis in patients with HCC. In the present study, we investigated the possible association between the polymorphisms of haplotypic block in the 3' untranslated region (UTR) of GRP78 and HCC risk in a Han Chinese population.
Methodology: DNA from 576 unrelated patients with HCC and 539 sex- and age-matched healthy controls was typed for rs16927997, rs1140763 and rs12009 in the GRP78 gene by TaqMan assays. Polymorphism distributions were computed by logistic regression to test the association of certain alleles, genotypes, haplotypes and diplotypes with HCC risk.
Results: Linkage disequilibrium (LD) analysis identified a total of 3 haplotypes and 6 diplotypes in this region. The distributions of allelotype, genotype, haplotype and diplotype in HCC patients were not significantly different from that in controls.
Conclusion: The present study suggested that polymorphisms in the 3' UTR of GRP78 were not useful diagnostic markers to predict the HCC risk.