Determination of p53 genotypes in oral cancer patients from India

The p53 tumour suppressor gene is inactivated in various types of human cancers, and has been implicated as an early event in several cancers. A p53 Pro/Arg polymorphism at exon 4 codon 72, has been suggested to be involved in susceptibility to cancers as well. Hence, in the current study, we investigated p53 exon 4 codon 72 polymorphism using Proline or Arginine specific primers from the peripheral blood cells (PBC) representing constitutional DNA from 72 oral cancer patients. PBC from 153 normal healthy individuals were used to determine the frequency of the p53 genotypes, Pro/Pro, Arg/Arg and Pro/Arg, in the Indian population. The frequency of distribution of genotypes in the normal healthy individuals was, Pro/Pro - 0.20 (31/153), Arg/Arg -- 0.14 (22/153) and Pro/Arg -- 0.65 (100/153); and in the oral cancer patients was, Pro/Pro -- 0.19 (14/72), Arg/Arg -- 0.08 (6/72) and Pro/Arg -- 0.72 (52/72). Thus, we observed an equidistribution of the genotypes in normal control and oral cancer patients (chi(2)= 1.77, df = 2, 0.3