Epithelial cadherin (E-cadherin; CDH1) may influence pericellular proteolysis and intracellular signal transduction, which plays an essential part of tumor invasion. In our study we investigated the correlation between CDH1 gene polymorphism and endometriosis in two groups of pre-menopausal Taiwanese women, group 1 (n = 150) consisting of women with severe stage IV endometriosis and group 2 (n = 159) of women with no endometriosis. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to identify the cuttable (C) and uncuttable (T) polymorphism of the CDH1-Pml I gene (rs1801026) located on the 3-untranslated region (3-UTR) of chromosome 16 and compare the genotypes and allelic frequencies of this gene in both groups. We found that the genotype and allele distributions of the CDH1-Pml I C/T polymorphism were significantly different in both groups. In group 1 the CDH1*C frequency was 47.7% and the T frequency 52.3%, while the CC homozygote frequency was 6.7%, the TT homozygote 11.3% and the CT heterozygote 82%. In group 2 the CDH1*C frequency was 17% and the T frequency 83%, while the CC frequency was 0.6%, the TT 66.1% and the CT 33.3%. These data indicate that the CDH1 gene polymorphism may be associated with the development of severe endometriosis and that the CDH1 gene C allele is related to higher susceptibility to endometriosis.
