Chinese alcoholic patients with esophageal cancer are genetically different from alcoholics with acute pancreatitis and liver cirrhosis

Genetic variation in alcohol metabolizing enzymes among Inuit and its relation to drinking patterns

“…Table 2 shows the distribution of genotypes of six SNPs in Inuit with presumed little admixture and in the general population of Greenland; for comparison, a general Danish population and Alaska Yupik Eskimos were included in the table. ALDH2 5 URT showed no allele Frequency with 95% CI of major alleles (in parentheses), in the present study among genetically least admixed Inuit, other Inuit, the general population of Denmark (Husemoen et al, 2008;Tolstrup et al, 2008) and Han Chinese (Chen et al, 1999;Chao et al, 2000Chao et al, , 2003. variation in any of the populations studied and ADH1B showed very little variation in Denmark only.…”

“…Fig. 1 shows the frequency of the major alleles among Inuit compared with a general Danish population (Husemoen et al, 2008;Tolstrup et al, 2008) and Han Chinese (Chen et al, 1999;Chao et al, 2000Chao et al, , 2003. The allele pattern of the Han differed considerably more from the Inuit and Danish patterns than the latter two differed among themselves.…”

Effects of 5-week ethanol feeding on the liver of aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 knockout mice

“…People who have the ALDH2*2 gene are highly sensitive to ethanol owing to a severe deficiency in ALDH2 activity, and the ALDH2*2 gene is very common in people of East Asian origin. In fact, research suggests that it is found in about half of the population of Japan and China [1,2]. Individuals with ALDH2*2 gene are less likely to be habitual drinkers [1].…”

Risk appraisal and endoscopic screening for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in Japanese populations

“…Case-control studies of various Japanese [5,[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] and Chinese [28,29] drinking populations have consistently shown heterozygosity for the inactive form of ALDH2 to be a strong risk factor for ESCC (ORs = 5.3-16.4) [30]. Recent studies have shown that ALDH2-related vulnerability for ESCC may include light-to-moderate drinkers [5,27,29] as well as heavy drinkers (Fig.…”

“…With the exception of one Japanese study [27], less-active homozygous ADH1B has been demonstrated to increase the risk of esophageal cancer (OR = 1.6-8.2) [30] in various case-control studies of Japanese [5,21,23,24] ( Fig. 1), Chinese [28,29], Thai [46], and Central European populations [47], and in a prospective follow-up study in cancer-free Japanese alcoholics (hazard ratio = 2.0) [15]. The combination of inactive heterozygous ALDH2 and less-active homozygous ADH1B increased the risk of esophageal cancer (OR = 30-40) in a multiplicative fashion [5,24,29].…”