Objective Apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease 1 (APE1) plays an essential role in the base excision repair pathway. Recent studies have shown that APE1 polymorphisms are associated with an increased risk for many types of cancers. This study investigated the association between APE1 polymorphisms and the susceptibility of ovarian cancer.

Methods A case-control study was performed on 124 patients with ovarian cancer and 141 controls. We genotyped the rs1760944 and rs1130409 polymorphisms and assessed their associations with the risk for ovarian cancer.

Results The rs1130409 polymorphism was significantly associated with a risk for ovarian cancer. The TG/GG genotype and the G allele were associated with a decreased risk for ovarian cancer (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.495; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.267–0.920 for TG vs TT; aOR, 0.263; 95% CI, 0.132–0.521 for GG vs TT; aOR, 0.486; 95% CI, 0.344–0.0.688 for the G allele vs the T allele). In the stratified analyses, we found that when comparing the TG/GG genotype versus the TT genotype, the lower risk was more evident in subgroups of patients 50 years or older (aOR, 0.753; 95% CI, 0.604–0.938), patients with menarche age of 15 years or older (aOR, 0.722; 95% CI, 0.573–0.910), patients with gravidity of 3 or more times (aOR, 0.732; 95% CI, 0.587–0.912), and postmenopausal women (aOR, 0.763; 95% CI, 0.615–0.947). Meanwhile, the rs1760944 polymorphism was not found to be associated with a risk for ovarian cancer. However, by haplotype analysis, we found that the T-G and G-G haplotypes were associated with a decreased risk for ovarian cancer.

Conclusions Our results suggest that in a Han Chinese population, the APE1 rs1130409 polymorphism may correlate with ovarian cancer susceptibility.