Background: The XRCC1 (X-ray repair cross complimenting group-I) gene in BER (base excision repair) pathway is essential for DNA repair process. Polymorphisms in this gene are associated with variations in the repair efficiency which might predispose individuals to development of various cancers. Two variants of XRCC1gene (at codon 399), Gln/Gln and Arg/Gln, have been shown to be related to lowered DNA repair capacity and increased genomic instability in multiple studies. Hence our investigation focused on genotyping these variants to correlate with other multiple risk factors in lung cancer (NSCLC) patients since we hypothesized that these variants of the XRCC1 gene might influence disease susceptibility. Materials and Methods: We examined the frequency of the polymorphism in one hundred cases and an almost equal number of controls after recording their demographics with a structured questionnaire. Genomic DNA from blood samples was extracted for PCR studies, followed by RFLP to determine the variants. The significance of the data was statistically analyzed. Results: The three genotypes in cases and controls were Arg/Arg (40% and 54.45%); Gln/Gln (19% and 9.90%), and Arg/Gln (41.0% and 35.64%) respectively. Among these 3 genotypes, we found Gln/Gln and Arg/Gln to show association with lung cancer. Correlating these genotypes with several parameters, we also found that these two variants were associated with risk in males (p<0.05) and with smoking habits (p<0.05). In females Arg/Gln genotype showed association with stage of the disease (p=0.04). This is the first report in South Indian scenario where Arg399Gln genotypes were found to be associated with stage of the disease in females. Conclusions: It is concluded that XRCC1 genotypes Gln/Gln and Arg/Gln may influence cancer susceptibility in patients with smoking habits and these functional SNPs in XRCC1 gene may act as attractive candidate biomarkers in lung cancer for diagnosis and prognosis.

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Recording of saccadic eye movements has proved to be a valuable tool for investigation of brain function and
dysfunction and is very sensitive to centrally acting drugs. Since there is a lack of agreement concerning
velocity–amplitude characteristics of saccadic eye movements, the present study obtained saccadic eye
movements from 24 healthy subjects using indigenously developed electro-oculographic recording and analysis
system in forward and countdown sequence. The validity of the system was further tested by evaluating the
psychotropic effects of 5mg zolpidem and 500mg caffeine in randomized, double blind, placebo controlled three
way cross over design on 24 healthy subjects. Saccadic eye movements were measured at baseline and 1, 2 and 3
hrs after administration of study medication. Mean (±SD) values for peak saccadic velocity (PSV) over saccades
of ±10, ±20, ±30, ±40, ±50 & ±60 degrees were in agreement with those previously reported. Zolpidem
produced statistically significant decrease in PSV compared to placebo at all the angular displacements at 1 & 2
hrs. In contrast, caffeine produced non-significant increase in PSV at all angular displacements at 1hr. Similarly
latency period (LP) increased with zolpidem and decreased with caffeine compared to placebo. The
electro-oculographic recording and analysis system is simple, sensitive to centrally acting drug effects and
therefore has potential for future experimental psychomotor assessment studies.