Association between a pro-inflammatory genetic profile and the risk of chronic atrophic gastritis among older adults from Germany

Pro-inflammatory polymorphisms have been suggested to explain part of the individual diversity in susceptibility to gastric carcinogenesis. We aimed to assess their impact on the risk of chronic atrophic gastritis (CAG) in a population-based study. Among 9953 older adults from Saarland/Germany, eight single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were assessed for 534 cases with serologically defined CAG and 534 age- and sex-matched controls at baseline examination. Of the 8 SNPs, only IL10 T-819C showed a borderline significant association with CAG risk (odds ratio for CC versus TT: 1.67 (95% confidence interval: 1.01–2.76)). No significant differences were observed for the distribution of inferred haplotypes between cases and controls. However, joint evaluation of several cytokine variants suggested an increased risk of CAG among individuals carrying several pro-inflammatory genotypes. Our findings suggest that a pro-inflammatory genetic profile may contribute to inter-individual variation in gastric cancer risk by increasing the susceptibility to the development of CAG.