BMC Cancer Research article Effects of polymorphisms in ERCC1, ASE-1 and RAI on the risk of colorectal carcinomas and adenomas: a case control study Camilla F Skjelbred†1,2, Mona Sæbø†2, Bjørn A Nexø3, Håkan Wallin4, Inger- Lise Hansteen1, Ulla Vogel4 and Elin H Kure*2,5 BioMed Central Open Access Address: 1Department of Laboratory Medicine, Section of Medical Genetics, Telemark Hospital, N-3710 Skien, Norway, 2Telemark University College, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of Environmental and Health Studies, Hallvard Eikas plass, N-3800 Bø i Telemark, Norway, 3Institute of Human Genetics, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark, 4National Institute of Occupational Health, Copenhagen, Denmark and 5Department of Pathology, Ullevaal University Hospital, Oslo, Norway Email: Camilla F Skjelbred - camilla-furu.skjelbred@sthf.no; Mona Sæbø - mona.sabo@hit.no; Bjørn A Nexø - nexo@humgen.au.dk; Håkan Wallin - hwa@ami.dk; Inger-Lise Hansteen - inger-lise.hansteen@sthf.no; Ulla Vogel - ubv@ami.dk; Elin H Kure* - elin.kure@hit.no * Corresponding author †Equal contributors Published: 03 July 2006 BMC Cancer 2006, 6:175 doi:10.1186/1471-2407-6-175 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/6/175 Received: 24 March 2006 Accepted: 03 July 2006 © 2006 Skjelbred et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: The risk of sporadic colorectal cancer is mainly associated with lifestyle factors and may be modulated by several genetic factors of low penetrance. Genetic variants represented by single nucleotide polymorphisms in genes encoding key players in the adenoma carcinoma sequence may contribute to variation in susceptibility to colorectal cancer. In this study, we aimed to evaluate whether the recently identified haplotype encompassing genes of DNA repair and apoptosis, is associated with increased risk of colorectal adenomas and carcinomas. Methods: We used a case-control study design (156 carcinomas, 981 adenomas and 399 controls) to test the association between polymorphisms in the chromosomal region 19q13.2-3, encompassing the genes ERCC1, ASE-1 and RAI, and risk of colorectal adenomas and carcinomas in a Norwegian cohort. Odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were estimated by binary logistic regression model adjusting for age and gender. Results: The ASE-1 polymorphism was associated with an increased risk of adenomas, OR of 1.39 (95% CI 1.06–1.81), which upon stratification was apparent among women only, OR of 1.66 (95% CI 1.15–2.39). The RAI polymorphism showed a trend towards risk reduction for both adenomas (OR of 0.70, 95% CI 0.49–1.01) and carcinomas (OR of 0.49, 95% CI 0.21–1.13) among women, although not significant. Women who were homozygous carriers of the high risk haplotype had an increased risk of colorectal cancer, OR of 2.19 (95% CI 0.95–5.04) compared to all non-carriers although the estimate was not statistically significant. Conclusion: We found no evidence that the studied polymorphisms were associated with risk of adenomas or colorectal cancer among men, but we found weak indications that the chromosomal region may influence risk of colorectal cancer and adenoma development in women. Page 1 of 6 (page number not for citation purposes)