Background: Oesophageal (Barrett's) and gastric cardia adenocarcinomas are cancers arising at and around the gastro-oesophageal junction. The prognosis is poor, since detection is usually at a late stage and metastatic spread occurs early.
Materials and methods: We investigated the 7q region with a set of 5 polymorphic markers spanning 7q36.1-q36.3 in 33 Barrett-related carcinomas. In addition, 40 gastric cardia cancers were investigated to compare the pattern of imbalance at these loci.
Results: Overall, the number of allelic loss was higher in Barrett's cancers than in gastric cardia carcinomas (p=0.04). In Barrett's adenocarcinomas, imbalance varied from 28% to 45% (of informative cases) with the highest prevalence at marker D7S483. In gastric cardia cancers, loss ranged from 12% to 27% (of informative cases), being most frequent at marker D7S3037. The difference between oesophageal and gastric adenocarcinomas was highest for polymorphic marker D7S483 (p=0.05).
Conclusion: Marker D7S483 can aid in discriminating oesophageal (Barrett's) and gastric cardia carcinomas. Further, this region possibly harbours cancer gene(s) involved in Barrett-related adenocarcinomas.