J Clin Pathol 2006 May 19; (Read article online)

Borbély AA, Murvai M, Szarka K, Kónya J, Gergely L, Hernádi Z, Veress G

AIMS: Survivin, a novel member of the inhibitor of apoptosis (IAP) family, plays an important role in cell cycle regulation. A common polymorphism at the survivin gene promoter (G/C at nt -31) was shown to be correlated with survivin gene expression in cancer cell lines. Our aim was to investigate whether this polymorphism could be involved in the development of HPV associated cervical carcinoma. METHODS: Survivin promoter polymorphism was detected in patients with cervical cancer, patients with equivocal cytologic atypia and in a control population using PCR-RFLP (restriction fragment length polymorphism) and PCR-SSCP (single strand conformation polymorphism) analysis. HPV was typed in cervical cancer and cytologic atypia patients using PCR-RFLP. RESULTS: We could not find any statistically significant differences in the genotype distributions of the survivin promoter variants among our study groups. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that the survivin promoter polymorphism at nt -31 may not represent an increased risk for the development of cervical cancer, at least in the population studied here.