Abstract
Backgroud: Increasing evidence suggests the involvement of chronic inflammation in the progression of prostate cancer, and prostaglandin-endoperoxide synthase 2 (PTGS2), also known as cyclooxygenase-2, catalyzes the rate-limiting steps of the pathway. We hypothesized that genetic variants of PTGS2 can influence the outcome of prostate cancer patients. METHODS: We genotyped five haplotype-tagging single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to detect common genetic variations across the PTGS2 region in 458 prostate cancer patients treated with radical prostatectomy. RESULTS: One SNP, rs4648302, was associated with disease recurrence. Five-year recurrence-free survival rate increased according to the number of variant alleles inherited (55.6%, 70.7%, and 100.0% for patients with different genotypes; P = 0.037), and the effect was maintained in multivariable analysis. Public dataset analyses also suggested that PTGS2 expression was correlated with prostate cancer prognosis. CONCLUSION: Our results indicated that PTGS2 could be a potential prognostic marker to improve the prediction of disease recurrence in prostate cancer patients.