Abstract

Oesophageal squamous cell cancer is the leading cause of cancer death amongst African males in South Africa. DNA was isolated from normal and tumour biopsies of the oesophagi of 33 African patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the oesophagus and was analysed with two dinucleotide repeat polymorphisms, a GT repeat sequence in the first intron, and a CA repeat in the promoter of the human α₂(I) procollagen gene (COL1A2), using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Normal and tumour DNAs from each individual were compared to identify changes present in the tumour DNA, but absent in normal DNA. Twenty two cases were informative (heterozygous) for the promoter polymorphism and 24 cases were informative for the intronic polymorphism. Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) was seen in 2/22 (9.1%) for the promoter and 3/24 (12.5%) for the intronic polymorphism. These changes involved a total of three patients: two patients displayed the lost allele incorporating both the CA repeat and GT repeat loci; the third patient revealed LOH at the intronic polymorphism, but was non-informative (homozygous) for the promoter polymorphism. Deletions within the procollagen genes may represent an as yet unrecognised but rare event in the multistep process of carcinogenesis.