Background: The purpose of this research was to investigate the association between alcohol dehydrogenase 1B (ADH1B) and aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (ALDH2) polymorphisms and hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) survival.
Methods: We genotyped ADH1B (rs1229984) and ALDH2 (rs671) single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 85 Japanese male patients with hypopharyngeal SCC. The independent prognostic values of ADH1B-ALDH2 genotypes were analyzed by univariate and multivariate proportional hazard Cox regression, taking well-known clinical risk factors into account.
Results: Heavy drinkers with ALDH2*2 allele resulted in significantly worse overall survival (OS; P = .028) and disease-free survival (DFS; P = .029) compared with other patients. Heavy drinkers with ALDH2*2 allele remained statistically significant in multivariate analysis for OS and DFS, indicating independent poor prognostic factor (hazard ratio [HR] 2.251; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.018-4.975 and HR 2.261; 95% CI 1.021-5.006, respectively).
Conclusion: We conclude that heavy drinkers with the ALDH2*2 allele are associated with poor outcome in hypopharyngeal SCC.
Keywords: alcohol dehydrogenase-aldehyde dehydrogenase (ADH-ALDH) polymorphism; head and neck cancers; hypopharyngeal cancers; prognosis.
© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.