Abstract: Background and purpose: Mounting evidence, both epidemiologic and mechanistic, for an association between the obesity and prostate cancer, is of public health interest. Many studies have investigated the role of adiponectin as a putative molecular mediator between obesity and prostate cancer. This study investigated association between ADIPOQ single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, rs266729 and rs182052) and risk of prostate cancer in Chinese men. Methods: Peripheral blood DNA was extracted from 917 prostate cancer patients and 1 036 cancer-free controls. Genotyping was performed using the TaqMan method. Associations between the SNPs and risk of prostate cancer were calculated using multivariate logistic regression models. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to assess associations between SNPs and body mass index (BMI). Results: The genotype frequencies of rs266729 and rs182052 among the controls were in agreement with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (P=0.29 and 0.83). We did not observe any statistically significant differences in the distribution of genotype frequencies between the two groups for rs266729 and rs182052 (P=0.88 and 0.63). Compared with major homozygotes, no association between heterozygotes or rare homozygotes of these two SNPs and prostate cancer risk was observed (OR=0.97, 95%CI: 0.81-1.16; OR: 0.89, 95%CI: 0.73-1.09). The protective effect of rs182052 AA genotype was evident in subgroups of age ≤ 69. Further ANOVA analyses revealed a significant association between rs182052 and BMI (P=0.03). Conclusion: Our data did not support an association between the ADIPOQ SNPs (rs266729 and rs182052) and risk of prostate cancer. The young age may enhance the protective effect of rs182052 AA genotype. ADIPOQ rs182052 is associated with BMI in prostate cancer patients.

Key words: ADIPOQ, Polymorphism, Prostate cancer