Impact of Toll-like receptor 4 polymorphisms on risk of cancer

Polymorphism of the <i>TLR4</i> Gene Reduces the Risk of Hepatitis C Virus-Induced Hepatocellular Carcinoma

“…It has been studied as a possible risk factor for prostate, gastric and colorectal cancers but no clear relationship has been detected [for a review, see ref. [15]]. This allele was included in a selection of 10 TLR4 gene SNPs that were determined in a group of 216 HCC cases and in 228 controls in a Chinese population [16]; these authors disclosed that several of the included SNPs, but not rs2149356, were individually related to the risk of developing HCC and suggested that a specific haplotype composed of 8 individual alleles (including the rs2149356 G major allele) was significantly linked to the risk of developing HCC.…”

“…The possible relation of the non-synonimous SNP at rs4986791 (T399I) with cancer risk has received more attention [15], as the minor T allele is related with reduced activation of nuclear factor-ĸB and proinflammatory cytokine expression [13,24], but only a possible relation with gallbladder cancer has been reported [25], and we have found no published data on the distribution of this polymorphism in patients with liver cancer. We have found a lower proportion of the rs4986791 T minor allele carriers among HCV-induced HCC patients than in the corresponding healthy and CHC control groups, but differences are not significant and without predictive value, a fact that may be explained in part by the low frequency of the T allele we have found in the Spanish population, requiring a greater sample size to reach statistical significance.…”

“…The relation between TLR4 polymorphisms and cancer risk has been recently reviewed [15] with conflicting results, but data on HCC are limited to a single study on a Chinese population that did not include the most studied T399I mutation but a sequence variation in non-coding regions of the TLR4 gene [16]. …”

Association of polymorphisms in TLR genes and in genes of the Toll-like receptor signaling pathway with cancer risk

“…However, this result may be related not to the absence of a role of IRAK1 gene polymorphisms in the etiology of all cancer types, but to the absence of their role in prostate cancer etiology, as suggested for TLR gene polymorphisms [216]. The findings of Sun et al [215] support this hypothesis, allowing it to extend to all polymorphisms of genes encoding the TLR pathway.…”

“…The influence of TLR4 gene polymorphisms on cancer risk has already been assessed [170], so we focused on other TLRs. To the best of the author's knowledge, all relevant articles published before February 2011 and available in the PubMed database are included in this review.…”