Background: Through their roles in tissue remodeling, variants in the genes that encode alpha1-antitrypsin (AAT) and neutrophil elastase (NE) were hypothesized to be associated with the risk of both chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Materials and methods: Cases with prevalent COPD (n=145), incident NSCLC (n=203) or prevalent COPD plus NSCLC (n=118) were compared to disease-free controls (n=317), to assess two functional polymorphisms in serpin peptidase inhibitor, clade A, member 1 (SERPINA1), which encodes AAT, and eleven tagging polymorphisms in and around elastase 2 (ELA2), which encodes NE. All analyses were stratified by race.
Results: Among African-Americans, the less efficient SERPINA1 variant appeared to be associated with increased risk of prevalent COPD but only in the presence of NSCLC (odds ratio=7.39; 95% confidence interval=1.03-53.21) and not after correcting for multiple comparisons.
Conclusion: Variations in SERPINA1 and ELA2 were not consistently or strongly associated with the risk of either COPD or NSCLC in either race.