Bladder cancer survival in patients with NOD2 or CDKN2A variants

The association between the c.3020insC allele and missense variant c.442G>A (p.P.A148T) and survival of patients with bladder or kidney cancer remains controversial. We compared the allele frequencies of c.3020insC and p.A148T allele in 706 patients with bladder cancer, 410 cases with kidney cancer against two control groups. The Cox proportional hazards model was used to determine whether there were any survival differences between carriers of the c.3020insC or the p.A148T variant. Among the three patient subgroups: patients under 60 years of age, non-smokers and a third with histological features of low grade noninvasive papillary bladder cancer, we observed that the c.3020insC allele had a nominal statistically significant effect on survival. We also observed that the c.3020insC variant was more frequent in patients with bladder cancer aged between 51 and 60 years. There was some nominal evidence that the p.A148T polymorphism reduced survival in the subgroup of bladder cancer patients under 60 years of age. We observed that in kidney cancer patients, the incidence of the variant appeared to be lower in the group aged between 60 and 70 years, however, this was not statistically significant. In addition, in patients with histological features of grade III chromophobic kidney cancer, the c.3020insC allele also appeared to be over-represented but this too was not statistically significant. We have shown that the c.3020insC allele and the p.A148T polymorphism does not play a role in the survival of patients with bladder cancer.