Genetic polymorphisms in glycolytic pathway are associated with the prognosis of patients with early stage non-small cell lung cancer.

This study was conducted to investigate whether polymorphisms of genes involved in glycolysis are associated with the prognosis of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after surgical resection. Forty-four single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of 17 genes in glycolytic pathway were investigated in a total of 782 patients with NSCLC who underwent curative surgical resection. The association of the SNPs with overall survival (OS) and disease free survival (DFS) were analyzed. Among the 44 SNPs investigated, four SNPs (ENO1 rs2274971A > G, PFKM rs11168417C > T, PFKP rs1132173C > T, PDK2 rs3785921G > A) were significantly associated with survival outcomes in multivariate analyses. When stratified by tumor histology, three SNPs (ENO1 rs2274971A > G, PFKM rs11168417C > T, and PDK2 rs3785921G > A) were significantly associated with OS and/or DFS only in squamous cell carcinoma, whereas PFKP rs1132173C > T exhibited a significant association with survival outcomes only in adenocarcinoma. When the four SNPs were combined, OS and DFS decreased as the number of bad genotypes increased (Ptrend = 8 × 10 and 3 × 10, respectively). Promoter assays showed that ENO1 rs2274971G allele had significantly higher promoter activity compared to the rs2274971A allele. The four SNPs, especially ENO1 rs2274971A > G, may be useful for the prediction of prognosis in patients with surgically resected NSCLC.