Biomarkers in Cancer

Objective: We evaluated the individual and combination effects of NAT1, NAT2 and tobacco smoking in a case-control study of 219 incident prostate cancer (PCa) cases and 555 disease-free men.

Methods: Allelic discriminations for 15 NAT1 and NAT2 loci were detected in germ-line DNA samples using Taqman polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays. Single gene, gene-gene and gene-smoking interactions were analyzed using logistic regression models and multi-factor dimensionality reduction (MDR) adjusted for age and subpopulation stratification. MDR involves a rigorous algorithm that has ample statistical power to assess and visualize gene-gene and gene-environment interactions using relatively small samples sizes (i.e., 200 cases and 200 controls).

Results: Despite the relatively high prevalence of NAT1*10/*10 (40.1%), NAT2 slow (30.6%), and NAT2 very slow acetylator genotypes (10.1%) among our study participants, these putative risk factors did not individually or jointly increase PCa risk among all subjects or a subset analysis restricted to tobacco smokers.

Conclusion: Our data do not support the use of N-acetyltransferase genetic susceptibilities as PCa risk factors among men of African descent; however, subsequent studies in larger sample populations are needed to confirm this finding.