TURK ONKOLOJI DERGISI-TURKISH JOURNAL OF ONCOLOGY, vol.37, no.4, pp.371-378, 2022 (ESCI)
Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), with its low survival rates and increasing incidence, is due to various etiological factors including environmental, genetic, and epigenetic changes. Interleukin 6 (IL 6) is a cytokine with both proand anti-inflammatory effects. Therefore, we investigated the possible association of the IL-6 gene variants with risk for OSCC in a Turkish cohort.METHODS This study included 42 patients with OSCC and 110 age-and gender-matched healthy controls. Three variants (-174G/C [rs1800795], -572G/C (rs1800796), and -597G/A [rs1800797]) in the IL-6 promoter region were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) method.RESULTS There was a significant difference in the genotype and allele frequencies of the IL-6 -174G/C variant between OSCC patients and controls. While the IL-6 -174G/C G/C genotype was higher in the patient group than in the control group, the G/G and C/C genotypes were lower in the patients compared to the control group (p=0.016, OR:0.653, 95% CI: 0.38-1.11). The genotype and allele distributions of -572G/C and -597G/A variants of the IL-6 gene were not statistically different between OSCC patients and the control group.CONCLUSION Our current investigation is focused on the role of variants of IL-6 gene on OSCC. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first study to evaluate the genotype and allele frequencies of IL-6 -174G/C,-572G/C, and 597G/A variants in patients with OSCC in a Turkish population. The results support that the IL-6 -174G/C variant may play an important role in susceptibility to OSCC in our population.