Introduction/Background Ovarian cancer (OC) is considered to demonstrate multifactorial causes including multiple genetic contributors. Variants of many genes are suspected to participate in increasing the risk for OC. Some of those are genes involved in tumor microenvironment formation, an example of which is Interleukin-10 (IL-10) gene. We tried to analyze the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) (rs1800896) in the IL-10 gene in relationship to OC risk and correlated it with the levels of IL-10 in the peripheral blood of OC patients.

Methodology A case-control study was performed on a total of 20 women, with histologically confirmed epithelial ovarian cancers and 20 age-matched controls. SNP genotyping was performed with TaqMan Assay with Real Time-PCR. Statistical analyses were performed by GraphPad Prism 9.3.1 for macOS. Statistical significance for differences in genotype frequencies was determined by Chi-square and Fisher’s exact test.

Results The genotype distributions of IL-10 gene polymorphisms among cancer and control groups were all according to the expected Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium. There was no statistically significant difference in frequency of genotypes and alleles between the two study groups.

In another analysis, the samples were grouped according to the polymorphic variant IL 10 (− 1082) A/G. Subjects having the homozygous variant (AA) had lower IL-10 mRNA levels than those with the homozygous wild (GG) genotype in both, ovarian cancer patients and controls, p < 0.05.

mRNA levels on IL-10, IL-8 were different among cases and controls (p < 0.05). Patients with OC had higher level of mRNA for IL-10 and IL-8 than controls.

Conclusion This relatively small-scaled study demonstrated, that mRNA levels of IL-10 and IL-8 are high in patients with OC and this goes along with the serum levels of proteins. However this difference is not determined by allelic differences, which means that other factors - epigenetic and regulatory - up-regulate expression of IL-10 and IL-8 genes in patients with OC.

Disclosures The study was supported by Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation (Grant N YS-21-1216).