Background: Folate-associated one-carbon metabolism (FOCM) is an important pathway in colorectal neoplasia risk but data on genetic variation in this pathway are largely limited to studies of single SNPs in selected genes.
Methods: We used a comprehensive tagSNP approach to study the association between genetic variation in 11 genes in the FOCM pathway and risk of incident distal colorectal adenomas in a sigmoidoscopy-based case-control study. We included 655 cases (one or more adenomas) and 695 controls (no adenomas) recruited from one of two Kaiser Permanente clinics between 1991 and 1995. We assessed a total of 159 tagSNPs selected using Haploview Tagger as well as selected non-synonymous SNPs. We used unconditional logistic regression to model the association between SNPs and risk of distal adenomas, assuming a log-additive model.
Results: Five SNPs in the SLC19A1 (RFC1) gene: rs1051266 (G80A), rs283895, rs2236484, rs12482346, and rs2838958 were associated with adenoma risk after correction for multiple testing (all corrected p values ≤ 0.043). The non-synonymous SLC19A1 SNP G80A interacted significantly with the MTHFR C677T genotype (interaction p value = 0.018).
Conclusion: Our data suggest that genetic variation in SLC19A1 may modify the risk of distal colorectal adenoma.