Background: Survivin, a novel member of the inhibitor of apoptosis family, plays an important role in cell cycle regulation. A common polymorphism at the survivin gene promoter (G/C at position 31) was shown to be correlated with survivin gene expression in cancer cell lines.
Aim: To investigate whether this polymorphism could be involved in the development of human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cervical carcinoma.
Methods: Survivin promoter polymorphism was detected in patients with cervical cancer, in patients with equivocal cytological atypia and in a control population using polymerase chain reaction (PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and PCR-single strand conformation polymorphism analysis. HPV was typed in patients with cervical cancer and cytological atypia using PCR-RFLP.
Results: No statistically significant differences were found in the genotype distributions of the survivin promoter variants among our study groups.
Conclusions: The survivin promoter polymorphism at position 31 may not represent an increased risk for the development of cervical cancer, at least in the population studied here.