The pattern-recognition pathway plays an important role in infection recognition and immune responses, and previous studies have suggested an association between genetic variation in innate immunity genes and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). We evaluated NHL risk associated with genetic variation in pattern-recognition genes using data from a case-control study of NHL conducted in Connecticut women. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 27 pattern-recognition genes were genotyped in 432 Caucasian incident NHL cases and 494 frequency-matched controls. Unconditional logistic regression was used to compute odds ratios (ORs) for NHL and common NHL subtypes in relation to individual SNPs and haplotypes. A gene-based analysis that adjusted for the number of tagSNPs genotyped in each gene showed a significant association with overall NHL for the MBP gene (P = 0.028), with the diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) subtype for the MASP2 gene (P = 0.011), and with the follicular lymphoma (FL) subtype for DEFB126 (P = 0.041). A SNP-based analysis showed that MBP rs8094402 was associated with decreased risks of overall NHL (allele risk OR = 0.72, P-trend = 0.0018), DLBCL (allele risk OR = 0.72, P-trend = 0.036), and FL (allele risk OR = 0.67, P-trend = 0.021), while MASP2 rs12711521 was associated with a decreased risk of DLBCL (allele risk OR = 0.57, P-trend = 0.0042). We also observed an increased risk of FL for DEFB126 rs6054706 (allele risk OR = 1.39, P-trend = 0.033). Our results suggest that genetic variation in pattern-recognition genes is associated with the risk of NHL or specific NHL subtypes, but these preliminary findings require replication in larger studies.
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