We observed significantly higher mRNA expression of ERα in HCV-related HCC liver tissues as compared to normals (<i>P</i> < 0.05) and ERβ in livers of HCV-related cirrhosis and HCV-related HCC subjects (<i>P</i> < 0.05).
Our hypothesis is based on the fact that liver tissue express ER and its different variants exert multiple functions in various stages of liver disease and participate in an extremely complicated signal transduction process, therefore we believe that the presence of one or more SNPs of ESR1 and ESR2 genes may be related with the increase of risk in developing and the severity of HCC, as well as in the response to different treatments.
Moreover, HPTE behaved as an ERalpha agonist and an ERbeta antagonist with other estrogen-responsive promoters (ERE-MMTV and vtERE) in HepG2 and HeLa cells.