No evidence of correlation between p53 codon 72 polymorphism and risk of bladder cancer in Moroccan patients

Background: The p53 codon 72 polymorphism has been investigated extensively for its association with various cancers around the world. Several studies have investigated the association between p53 polymorphism at codon 72 and risk of developing bladder cancer, but the results are still controversial. Aim: The aim of our study was to evaluate the association between the p53 polymorphism and the bladder cancer risk among Moroccan patients. Materials and Methods: This study was carried out on fresh biopsies from 41 patients with bladder cancer confirmed and 38 blood samples from control donors. Deoxyribonucleic acid was genotyped by "Allele-specific polymerase chain reaction" using specific primers to each polymorphic variant. Results: Frequencies of Arg/Arg, Arg/Pro and Pro/Pro genotypes among cases were 17%, 66%, and 17%, while in controls the frequencies of Arg/Arg, Arg/Pro and Pro/Pro were 15.8%, 63.2%, and 21%, respectively. The difference between cases and controls was not statistically significant. An increased risk of bladder cancer development was not clearly related to any polymorphic variant of the p53 Arg72Pro in our study group from Moroccan population. Moreover, the frequency of the Arg allele was higher (71.45%) than the Pro allele (28.55%) in high stage of bladder tumors, but this difference was statistically not significant. Conclusion: This study suggests that Arg allele could be more involved in developing bladder tumor in Moroccan population than the Pro allele. Therefore, enlarging the sampling will be necessary to confirm this association in Moroccan population.