Abstract: Objective： To study the relationship among estrogen metablizing genes CYP17, COMT genetic polymorphism and endometrial adenocarcinoma. Methods：CYP17 and COMT polymorphisms were detected by the methods of PCR-RFLP in a case-control study, including 80 cases of endometrial adenocarcinoma and 84 cases as controls. Results：The freque ncies of the MspAI1 polymorphisms in the cancer group and the control group were significantly different (P<0.05), and the distribution values of A1/A1 and A1/A2 genotypes in the cancer group were significantly higher than those in the control group while the frequency of A1 allele in the cancer group was also significantly higher than that in the control group. The odds ratio of A/A1 and A1/A2 genotypes was 3.152 and 2.693, respectively in endometrial adenocarcinoma, which both had a significant difference from that of A2/A2 genotype (P<0.05). There was not a significant difference in the distribution of COMT genotypes between endometrial adenocarcinoma patients and control subjects (P>0.05). Conclusions: The results suggest that A1/A1, A1/A2 genotypes and A1 allele are related to the susceptibility of endometrial adenocarcinoma and they might be one of the useful markers for predicting endometrial adenocarcinoma. The allele encoding for low activity COMT may not be a genetic risk factor for endometrial adenocarcinoma.

Key words: Endometrial neoplasms, Cytochrome P450c17, Catechol-O-methyltransferase, Polymorphism