Polymorphisms of arylamine N-acetyltransferase2 and risk of lung and colorectal cancer

the arylamine n-acetyltransferase 2 (nat2) enzymes detoxify a wide range of naturally occurring xenobiotics including carcinogens and drugs. point mutations in the nat2 gene result in the variant alleles m1 (nat2 *5a), m2 (nat2*6a), m3 (nat2*7) and m4 (nat2 *14a) from the wild-type wt (nat2 *4) allele. the current study was aimed at screening genetic polymorphisms of nat2 gene in 49 lung cancer patients, 54 colorectal cancer patients and 99 cancer-free controls, using pcr-rflp. there were significant differences in allele frequencies between lung cancer patients and controls in the wt, m2 and m3 alleles (p < 0.05). however, only m2 and m3 allele frequencies were different between colorectal cancer patients and controls (p < 0.05). there was a marginal significant difference in the distribution of rapid and slow acetylator genotypes between lung cancer patients and controls (p = 0.06 and p = 0.05, respectively), but not between colorectal cancer patients and controls (p = 1.0 and p = 0.95, respectively). risk of lung cancer development was found to be lower in slow acetylators [odds ratio (or): 0.51, 95% confidence interval (95% ci): 0.25, 1.02, p-value = 0.07]. no effect was observed in case of colorectal cancer. our results showed that nat2 genotypes and phenotypes might be involved in lung cancer but not colorectal cancer susceptibility in jordan.