ABO blood groups and expression of blood group antigens of epithelial ovarian cancer in Chinese women

Abstract

Abstract Background ABO blood groups has been associated with risk of several cancers; however, the results for an association with ovarian cancer are inconsistent and little is known about the expression of histo‐blood group (ABH) antigens and ABO gene in ovarian tumor tissues. Methods To assess the impact of genotype‐derived ABO blood types on the risk of EOC, we conducted a case–control study in 1,870 EOC and 4,829 controls. Expression of A and B antigen in 70 pairs of ovarian tumor tissues and adjacent normal tissues were detected by immunohistochemistry. Gene expression and DNA methylation profiling was conducted in ovarian tumor tissues. Results We identified that blood group A was associated with increased risk for EOC compared to blood group O (OR = 1.18, 95% CI = 1.03–1.36, p = 0.019). Increased frequency of aberrant expression of histo‐blood group antigens was observed in patients with blood group A (76.5%) compared to patients with blood group O (21.1%) and B (5.0%) by immunohistochemistry (p < 0.001). ABO gene expression was down‐regulated in ovarian tumor tissues compared with paired adjacent normal tissues (p = 0.027). In addition, ABO gene expression was positively correlated with NFYB (r = 0.38, p < 0.001) and inversely correlated with DNA methylation level of four CpG sites on ABO gene (cg11879188, r = − 0.3, p = 0.002; cg22535403, r = − 0.30, p = 0.002; cg13506600, r = − 0.22, p = 0.025; cg07241568, r = − 0.21, p = 0.049) in ovarian tumor tissues. Conclusion We identified blood group A was associated with increased EOC risk in Chinese women and provided the clues of the possible molecular mechanisms of blood group A related to ovarian cancer risk.

Keywords

• ABH antigens
• ABO blood group
• epithelial ovarian cancer
• risk