Interleukin-17RA polymorphisms rs887796 and rs1468488 are not associated with gastric cancer

Abstract

Gastric cancer is a multifactorial disease in which Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection plays a central carcinogenic role through inflammation mediated by cytokines, including interleukin-17 (IL-17). The IL-17RA receptor is a key component of this signaling pathway, and genetic polymorphisms in inflammatory genes may influence disease susceptibility. This study aimed to investigate whether IL-17RA rs887796:A > G and rs1468488:T > C polymorphisms, individually or as haplotypes, are associated with susceptibility to gastritis and gastric cancer in a Brazilian cohort, while accounting for H. pylori infection in 301 gastric biopsy samples, classified into three groups: Control (histologically normal gastric mucosa; n = 95), Gastritis (n = 112), and Cancer (n = 94). Genotyping was performed by TaqMan qPCR, and statistical analyses were conducted using SNPStats. H. pylori infection was significantly more frequent among gastric cancer patients than controls (OR = 1.94; p = 0.03). Genotype distributions for both IL-17RA polymorphisms were in Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium in all groups. No significant associations were observed between rs887796 or rs1468488 and gastritis or gastric cancer under codominant, dominant, recessive, or log-additive genetic models, including analyses adjusted for H. pylori infection. Haplotype analysis also showed no significant associations with gastric diseases. Together, these findings suggest that IL-17RA rs887796 and rs1468488 are not major independent susceptibility markers for gastritis or gastric cancer in this Brazilian cohort, although the limited sample size may reduce power to detect modest genetic effects.