The human CYP2E1 gene and lung cancer: DraI and RsaI restriction fragment length polymorphisms in a Finnish study population.

We investigated point mutational DraI and RsaI restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs) in the CYP2E1 gene in 101 lung cancer patients, 40 patients with other pulmonary diseases and 121 healthy control subjects. In the DraI RFLP analysis of the 121 healthy control subjects, 96 had the DD genotype, 24 the CD genotype and one the CC genotype. Genotypic distribution in the patients with other pulmonary disease showed a similar trend (P = 0.50), though the group was considerably smaller. The distribution of DraI genotypes in the lung cancer patients was not significantly different from that of the healthy controls (P = 0.44). We were not able to reproduce the results of a Japanese report describing a statistically significant association between the rare DraI RFLP genotype CC and predisposition to lung cancer. Furthermore, this genotype was much less frequent in our study populations than in the Japanese study. The other point mutation studied, which results in RsaI restriction site polymorphism in the 5'-flanking region of the CYP2E1 gene, was almost absent in our study groups. These findings on our Finnish lung cancer population suggest that the CYP2E1 gene polymorphisms studied do not have an important role in susceptibility to lung cancer.