%0 Journal Article %T The TGFBR1*6A allele is not associated with susceptibility to colorectal cancer in a Spanish population: a case-control study %A Adela Castillejo %A Trinidad Mata-Balaguer %A Paola Montenegro %A Enrique Ochoa %A Rafael L¨¢zaro %A Ana Mart¨ªnez-Cant¨® %A Mar¨ªa-Isabel Castillejo %A Carla Guarinos %A V¨ªctor-Manuel Barber¨¢ %A Carmen Guill¨¦n-Ponce %A Alfredo Carrato %A Jos¨¦-Lu¨ªs Soto %J BMC Cancer %D 2009 %I BioMed Central %R 10.1186/1471-2407-9-193 %X The case-control study involved 800 Spanish subjects: 400 sporadic colorectal cancer patients and 400 age-, sex-, and ethnic-matched controls. The odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI) for the TGFBR1*6A polymorphism were calculated using unconditional logistic regression adjusted for age and sex. Analysis of somatic mutations at the GCG repeat of TGFBR1 exon 1 and germline allele-specific expression were also conducted to obtain further information on the contribution of the TGFBR1*6A allele to CRC susceptibility.There was no statistically significant association between the TGFBR1*6A allele and CRC (p > 0.05). The OR was 1.147 (95% CI: 0.799¨C1.647) for carriers of the TGFBR1*6A allele and 0.878 (95% CI: 0.306¨C2.520) for homozygous TGFBR1*6A individuals compared with the reference. The frequency of the polymorphism was not affected by age, sex or tumour stage. The TGFBR1*6A allele was more prevalent among colon tumour patients than among rectal tumour patients. Tumour somatic mutations were found in only two of 69 cases (2.9%). Both cases involved a GCG deletion that changed genotype 9A/9A in normal DNA to genotype 9A/8A. Interestingly, these two tumours were positive for microsatellite instability, suggesting that these mutations originated because of a deficient DNA mismatch repair system.Allele-specific expression of the 9A allele was detected in seven of the 14 heterozygous 9A/6A tumour cases. This could have been caused by linkage disequilibrium of the TGFBR1*6A allele with mutations that cause allele-specific expression, as was recently suggested.Our results suggest that the TGFBR1*6A allele does not confer an increased risk of colorectal cancer in the Spanish population.Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the main cause of cancer-related deaths in Spain. Although environmental and genetic factors associated with cancer have been described, current knowledge of the genetic basis of colorectal cancer is limited. About 5% of colorectal cancer cases are ass %U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/9/193