ERCC1 and cancer: To date, in the published studies on associations between the ERCC1 rs11615T>C, rs3212986C>A and rs3212961A>C polymorphisms and cancer risk [16], only two studies focused on ERCC1 polymorphisms and risk of gastric cancer, both of which studied the rs11615T>C only in a relatively small Italy population, including one [17] with only 126 gastric cancer cases and the other of only 314 cases [18], but none of these two studies included the SNPs under investigation in the present study.