Abstract
It is curious that East Asian women have a low incidence and mortality of ovarian cancer in various epidemiological studies. Although different explanations were given, they appear unsubstantial. We notice that East Asian population usually are inactive aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 mutation (ALDH2 (*) 2) carriers, and ALDH plays an important role in the resistance of ovarian cancer to chemotherapeutics, especially in ovarian cancer stem cells. Therefore, we hypothesize whether ALDH2 mutation is the major reason for low incidence and mortality of ovarian cancer in East Asian women, and use the evidence from literature, transcriptomic data with average 5-year overall survival to confirm our hypothesis.