Introduction
Gastric cancer is a common cancer type. In the world, this cancer type has the second highest incidence among males and third highest among females [1]. In Korea, the incidence rate of gastric cancer was second highest, and the mortality rate of gastric cancer was third highest among all cancer types in a 2010 Korean cancer statistics study [2].
The incidence rate of gastric cancer differs between patient age, location, and even sex [3], because gastric cancer has various subtypes [3, 4] and a lot of risk factors [5]. Helicobacter pylori is known for having a relation with gastric cancer [6]. Almost all gastric cancer patients are infected with H. pylori [3]. As known before, dietary habits also have the potential to affect gastric cancer [1]. The incidence risk factors have differences in gastric cancer or peptic ulcers by blood type [7] and sex [8]. Gastric cancer type also depends on patient populations or race [5]. So, an analysis is needed to find known and unknown risk factors in diverse phenotypes [3]. Gastritis is related with gastric cancer. Chronic gastric inflammation has the potential to grow into gastric cancer [9].
Many risk factors are related with gastritis, as already reported. However, even though gender is known to be associated with gastritis infraction, there is not much information about the effects on gastritis depending on gender. So, we examined Korean risk factors of gastritis and gastric ulcer using genotypes and clinical characteristics of patients who were diagnosed with gastritis or gastric ulcer in each gender. For revealing the correlation with gastritis and known and unknown risk factors, we analyzed single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and epidemiological data of the Korea Association Resource (KARE) project, which comprised the results of the Anseong and Ansan cohorts study.