RESPONSE: Re: Polymorphisms of Death Pathway Genes FAS and FASL in Esophageal Squamous-Cell Carcinoma

Abstract
Recently, we reported a statistically significant association between genetic polymorphisms in the death pathway genes FAS and FASL and risk of esophageal squamous-cell carcinoma among the Chinese (1). Krippl et al. now extend the results to breast cancer, showing a similar association between the FAS –1377G>A polymorphism and risk of the cancer among Caucasians. However, they did not observe the same effect for the other two functional polymorphisms, FAS –670A>G and FASL –844C>T. There are several possible explanations for the inconsistent results between their study on breast cancer and our study on esophageal squamous-cell carcinoma.