Research Paper|Volume 10, Issue 3|pp 481—491

Associations between lncRNA MEG3 polymorphisms and neuroblastoma risk in Chinese children

Zhen-Jian Zhuo^1,², Ruizhong Zhang¹, Jiao Zhang³, Jinhong Zhu⁴, Tianyou Yang¹, Yan Zou¹, Jing He^1,⁵, Huimin Xia¹

¹Department of Pediatric Surgery, Guangzhou Institute of Pediatrics, Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzho, Guangdong 510623, China
²School of Chinese Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 999077, China
³Department of Pediatric Surgery, the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzho, Henan 450052, China
⁴Department of Clinical Laboratory, Molecular Epidemiology Laboratory, Harbin Medical University Cancer Hospital, Harbin, Heilongjiang 150040, China
⁵Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Department of Experimental Research, Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Guangzho, Guangdong 510060, China

* * Equal contribution

Received: February 12, 2017Accepted: March 22, 2018Published: March 27, 2018

Copyright: © 2018 Zhuo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Neuroblastoma is the third most common childhood cancer after leukemias and cancer of the central nervous system. Long noncoding RNA MEG3 polymorphisms have been shown to confer cancer susceptibility; however, their roles in the genetic predisposition to neuroblastoma remain unclarified. To answer this question, we genotyped two MEG3 polymorphisms, rs7158663 G>A and rs4081134 G>A, in 392 neuroblastoma children and 783 controls by TaqMan method. The results showed that neither single locus nor the combination analysis supported an association between MEG3 polymorphism and neuroblastoma risk. Interestingly, we found that subjects carrying rs4081134 AG/AA genotypes significantly tended to develop neuroblastoma among subgroups with age >18 month (adjusted OR=1.36, 95% CI=1.01-1.84) and clinical stage III+IV disease (adjusted OR=1.47, 95% CI=1.08-1.99), when compared with reference group. In the combined analysis of MEG3 polymorphisms, we found that carriers of 2 risk genotypes were more likely to have higher risk of developing neuroblastoma than those with 0-1 risk genotype among children more than 18 months of age (adjusted OR=1.36, 95% CI=1.01-1.84, P=0.042), and with clinical stages III+IV disease (adjusted OR=1.47, 95% CI=1.08-2.00, P=0.014). Our data suggest MEG3 as a weak-effect neuroblastoma susceptibility gene. Well-designed studies with large sample studies are needed to further validate this finding.