Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Obesity constitutes a risk factor for the development of aggressive forms of prostate cancer. It has been proposed, that prostate cancer has a genetic predisposition and that PPARGC1A and ADIPOQ polymorphisms play a role in the development of this condition.
OBJECTIVE:
To analyse the association of two PPARGC1A and ADIPOQ polymorphisms as well as their haplotypes, with the development of aggressive prostate cancer in Mexican-Mestizo men with overweight or obesity.
SUBJECTS AND METHODS:
Two hundred fifty seven men with prostate cancer of Mexican-Mestizo origin were included. Body mass index (BMI) was determined and the degree of prostate cancer aggressiveness by the D’Amico classification. DNA was obtained. Rs7665116 and rs2970870 of PPARGC1A, and rs266729 and rs1501299 of ADIPOQ were studied by real-time PCR allelic discrimination. Pairwise linkage disequilibrium, between single nucleotide polymorphisms was calculated and haplotype analysis was performed.
RESULTS:
A higher-risk (D’Amico classification) was observed in 21.8% of patients. An association of cancer aggressiveness with rs2970870 of PPARGC1A, and rs501299 of ADIPOQ, as well as with one haplotype of ADIPOQ was documented.
CONCLUSIONS:
This is the first study regarding the relationship of PPARGC1A and ADIPOQ polymorphisms, and the aggressiveness of prostate cancer in men with overweight or obesity.
Introduction
Prostate cancer is a global public health problem, being the second most common cancer in men [1]. In Mexico, mortality rate during 2013 was 10.3 deaths per 100,000 men [2].
It has been determined that prostate cancer is a multifactorial disease, where genetics and environmental factors play a key role in its development [3, 4]. It has been previously suggested that a higher body mass index (BMI), could be associated with the possibility of developing a more aggressive form of prostate cancer, thus increasing its mortality rate [5, 6, 7, 8]. Likewise, it has been stated that obesity could increase the risk of biochemical recurrence after primary treatment [9]. The after mentioned data is relevant, due to the fact that obesity has reached epidemic proportions worldwide, being México the second nation with the biggest obesity prevalence worldwide (32.4% in 2012); overweight prevalence in men aged 60–69 years, is at 49.8% in our country [10].
The Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor
Low serum adiponectin concentrations, have also been described as a risk factor for the development of more aggressive forms of prostate cancer in subjects with obesity [22]. Different lines support the role of adiponectin as an anti-cancer adipokine, due to its anti- inflammatory effect [23, 24], to its inhibition of cell proliferation and to the generation of apoptosis [23, 25, 26]. Besides, polymorphisms of adiponectin (ADIPOQ) (rs266729 and rs1501299) associated with obesity [27, 28, 29] and with prostate cancer [27, 30, 31], have been described.
Obesity is considered an independent risk factor for the development of aggressive forms of prostate cancer and both diseases have a high genetic predisposition. Considering that polymorphisms of PPARGC1A and ADIPOQ may influence the risk of both entities, the aim of this study was to analyse the possible association of polymorphisms in these genes, as well as their haplotypes, with the presentation of aggressive forms of prostate cancer in Mexican-Mestizo men with overweight or obesity.
Subjects and methods
Subjects
The study was approved by the Human Research Committees of the participating institutions; informed written consent was obtained from all men before participation, and all procedures were in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Two hundred fifty seven unrelated overweight or obese men, with histologically confirmed prostate cancer, of Mexican-Mestizo ethnic origin who visited our outpatient clinic were included. Only men born in Mexico, who had a Spanish-derived last name and Mexican ancestors back to the third generation, were considered Mexican-Mestizo. Men with a family history of prostate cancer or men, who had presented other previous neoplasias, were excluded from the study.
Body weight and height were measured at the first visit, with the subject in a standing position, wearing a hospital gown and without shoes. Weight and height were used to calculate body mass index (BMI) (kg/m
Patients were categorized according to the classification proposed by D’Amico into low, intermediate and high risk, based on prostate specific antigen (PSA), Gleason grade and clinical stage [32].
Methods
Peripheral blood samples were obtained from all individuals and genomic DNA was purified using the salting out procedure described by Miller et al. [33]. The rs7665116 and rs2970870 of PPARGC1A and the rs266729 and rs1501299 of ADIPOQ were studied.
Real-time PCR allelic discrimination TaqMan assay (AB) was used for genotyping analysis. All PCR reactions contained 10 ng of DNA, 5.0
Real-time PCR was performed on a LightCycler
Statistical analysis
This is a cross sectional and retrospective study. Data from the overall patient population was summarized as absolute and relative frequencies for qualitative variables. Allele frequency differences between groups were assessed by
Results
General characteristics of 257 Mexican-Mestizo men with prostate cancer
General characteristics of 257 Mexican-Mestizo men with prostate cancer
PSA
Two hundred fifty seven men presenting overweight or obesity and prostate adenocarcinoma were included. General characteristics of all individuals included are shown in Table 1. Age ranged from 55–78 years. According to the World Health Organization criteria, among the 257 men, 187 (72.8%) presented overweight and 70 (27.2%) obesity. One hundred and ninety two patients (74.7%) had PSA concentrations
A Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium test was performed for the polymorphisms, showing that the distribution of the observed genotypes did not differ from what was expected in men with prostate cancer and overweight or obesity (
Allele and Genotype frequencies of PPARGC1A and ADIPOQpolymorphisms in Mexican-Mestizo men with prostate cancer and overweight or obesity according to the D’Amico classification
Frequencies of different haplotypes of the ADIPOQ gene in Mexican-Mestizo men with prostate cancer presenting overweight or obesity grouped by the D’Amico classification
The first allele of the haplotype corresponds to rs266729, and the second to rs1501299.
When we analyzed linkage disequilibrium (LD) among the two SNPs of PPARGC1A we observed a value of
Taking into consideration that obesity constitutes a risk factor for the development of aggressive forms of prostate cancer, thus increasing its mortality rate and also knowing that both pathological entities have a genetic predisposition, we considered it was important to study the association of some genetic variants in patients presenting prostate cancer and overweight or obesity. Therefore, in the present study we analyzed the association among two PPARGC1A (rs7665116 and rs2970870), and two of ADIPOQ (rs266729 and rs1501299) polymorphisms, as well as their haplotypes, with the aggressiveness of prostate cancer in Mexican-Mestizo men presenting overweight or obesity.
PPARGC1A is a master regulator gene of adipose tissue differentiation [11], whilst PPARg is expressed in several prostate cancer cell lines and also in human prostate epithelium, in normal as well as in tumoral tissue [15]. Different polymorphisms of PPARGC1A (like, rs7665116 and rs2970870), have been studied in neurodegenerative diseases and left ventricular diastolic function [20, 21, 34, 35, 36]. Che et al. [21] found that both polymorphisms were associated with age-at-onset of Huntington Disease; meanwhile, Soyal et al. [36] only observed that rs2970870 was associated with this condition. Further, Taherzadeh-Fard et al. [20] and Ramos et al. [35] found that rs7665116 presented a marginal association with the age-at-onset of the disease in both additive and dominant models. Juang et al. [34] carried out an association study of rs7665116 and rs2970870 with left ventricular diastolic function in Caucasian individuals, observing a marginal association of rs2970870 with latent left ventricular diastolic dysfunction. However, to our knowledge, there are no reports of genetic studies that analyze these polymorphisms in the context of men with prostate cancer regarding its aggressiveness. Due to the fact that, rs2970870 is located in the promoter region, which could influence gene expression, and rs7665116 is located in intron 2 a highly conserved region, which is suggested as a potential recombination hot spot, we analyzed both SNPs in our population with prostate cancer.
We found that only rs2970870 of PPARGC1A was associated with the presence of aggressive prostate cancer in men with overweight or obesity. When we compared the genotypes among the different groups, according with the D’Amico’s classification, we observed in additive and in recessive models that CC genotypes were protective for the development of aggressive prostate cancer (data not shown). In contrast, Che et al. [21] observed, that the CC genotype was associated with an earlier onset of symptoms in Huntington disease when comparing these patients with those exhibiting other genotype. The relative distribution of the
Moreover, adiponectin a cytokine mainly secreted in adipose tissue could be the link between obesity and prostate cancer [22, 23, 24, 25, 26]; furthermore, polymorphisms of ADIPOQ (i.e. rs266729 and rs1501299) with a functional impact have been associated with adiponectin levels, obesity or prostate cancer [27, 28, 29, 30, 31]. Beebe-Dimmer et al. [27] studied rs266729 and rs1501299 not finding any association with prostate cancer risk. On the other hand, Kaklamani et al. [31] found an association of both polymorphisms with prostate cancer in Caucasians. Dhillon et al. [30] also studying Caucasian men, found an association of rs266729 with an overall risk of prostate cancer, as well as with lower adiponectin levels in plasma.
Regarding our results, of ADIPOQ polymorphisms, we found that only rs1501299 was associated with prostate cancer aggressiveness in men with overweight or obesity. Furthermore, according with the D’Amico’s classification we observed, in all genetics models tested, that the CC genotype was associated with aggressive prostate cancer (data not shown). The latter is important, since the frequency of the
Additionally, due to the fact that haplotypes could provide a better tool than a single marker variation and because of its strong LD, we analyzed the relationship of haplotypes formed by rs266729 and rs1501299 of ADIPOQ, with aggressive prostate cancer in men with overweight or obesity, observing that these SNPs are inherited as a block. We found that the
This study has some limitations. The first one is that the design does not allow us to determine a causal relationship between the polymorphisms analyzed and prostate cancer aggressiveness in individuals with overweight or obesity. Another limitation was the limited statistical power to detect association of rs7665116 of PPARGC1A and rs266729 of ADIPOQ, with prostate cancer aggressiveness. Despite these limitations, the strengths of the study are the analysis of this cancer aggressiveness according to D’Amico classification and the statistical power, according to the frequency, of the minor allele of rs2970870 of PPARGC1A and rs1501299 of ADIPOQ, as well as for the haplotypes (
In conclusion, to our knowledge, this is the first study regarding the relationship of rs2970870 of PPARGC1A and rs1501299 of ADIPOQ, as well as the haplotype formed by both SNPs of ADIPOQ, with the aggressiveness of prostate cancer in men presenting overweight or obesity, due to the importance of trying to find an obesity biomarker, which could be related to prostate cancer aggressiveness. Regarding the other two SNPs studied, we did not find a significant association relating to the aggressiveness of prostate cancer. This could be due to the fact that there was not enough power to detect differences; therefore, further studies in a larger number of individuals should explore this possibility. In addition, in our patients, the allelic and genotypic frequencies of the SNPs analyzed were different when compared to other populations. For this reason, it is important to carry out association studies in different populations worldwide, in order to determine whether genetic markers associated with prostate cancer aggressiveness in individuals with overweight or obesity, are the same or vary depending on the populations studied.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the División de Investigación, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México, and by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Apoyo al Fortalecimiento y Desarrollo de la Infraestructura Científica y Tecnológica), México; Grant: 250786). Jesús Benítez Granados was supported by a Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACyT), México, fellowship award. María Elena Tejeda and André Tapia were supported by a Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (CONACyT), México, fellowship award.
Conflict of interest
All authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
