Gastric cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Despite declining incidence and mortality rates, the disease burden remains high and is expected to increase due to an aging population. Gastric cancer is molecularly and phenotypically very heterogeneous and is often diagnosed at an advanced stage when treatment options are limited. Differences in patient responses to treatment could be due to single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in DNA repair genes. Genes such as XRCC1 and ERCC1 play roles in various DNA repair mechanisms and could influence the efficacy of platinum-based chemotherapy. In this master's thesis, we selected candidate SNPs rs1799782 and rs25487 in XRCC1 and rs3212986 and rs11615 in ERCC1 for genotyping on DNA samples from Slovenian gastric cancer patients using competitive allele-specific polymerase chain reaction. Our statistical analyses evaluated the associations between these SNPs and the risk of disease onset, clinical-histopathological factors, and patient survival. We found that rs3212986 is associated with increased susceptibility to gastric cancer. The SNPs rs25487, rs3212986, and rs11615 were associated with specific clinical indicators, such as tumor grade, Lauren classification histological type, and vascular invasion. Additionally, rs1799782, tumor histological type, and perineural invasion were found to be associated with the survival of patients with gastric cancer. Broadening the scope of our study could assist clinicians in making more informed decisions regarding the treatment of patients with this complex disease.
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