MATERIALS AND METHODS: miR-205 expression was investigated in 48 cases of inflammatory, benign and malignant tumor tissue array of the neck, oronasopharynx, larynx and salivary glands by Locked Nucleic Acid in situ hybridization (LNA-ISH) technology.

RESULTS: miR-205 expression was significantly differentially expressed across all of the inflammatory, benign and malignant tumor tissues of the neck. A significant increase in miR-205 staining intensity (p<0.05) was observed from inflammation to benign and malignant tumors in head and neck tissue array, suggesting that miR-205 could be a biomarker to differentiate between cancer and non-cancer tissues.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: We selected 157 NPC cases and 136 controls from two hospitals in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for this study. The polymorphisms studied were genotyped by PCR-RFLP assay and allele and genotype frequencies, haplotype and linkage disequilibrium were determined using SNPstat software.

RESULTS: For the XPD Lys751Gln polymorphism, the frequency of the Lys allele was higher in cases than in controls (94.5% versus 85.0%). For the XRCC1 Arg280His polymorphism, the frequency of Arg allele was 90.0% and 89.0% in cases and controls, respectively and for XRCC1 Arg399Gln the frequency of the Arg allele was 72.0% and 72.8% in cases and controls respectively. All three polymorphisms were in linkage disequilibrium. The odds ratio from haplotype analysis for these three polymorphisms and their association with NPC was 1.93 (95%CI: 0.90-4.16) for haplotype CGC vs AGC allele combinations. The global haplotype association with NPC gave a p-value of 0.054.