BRCA1 and cervical small cell carcinoma: To explore the relationship between DNA repair gene polymorphisms and the clinical outcome of SCCE patients, we investigated the polymorphisms of DNA repair genes poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP1) and X-ray repair cross-complementing protein 1 (XRCC1), which are involved in base excision repair (BER), breast cancer susceptibility gene 1 (BRCA1) and breast cancer susceptibility gene 2 (BRCA2), which are involved in homologous recombination repair (HR), and xeroderma pigmentosum group C (XPC), which is involved in nucleotide excision repair (NER).