Abstract: Objective To study the correlations between the Arg399Gln polymorphism in the DNA repair gene XRCC1 and genetic susceptibility to hepatocellular carcinoma （HCC） in liver cancer family groups in Fusui county，Guangxi．Methods In this case-control study，21 liver cancer family groups were selected as cases and 10 normal family groups as controls.Polymerase chain reaction-restric-tion fragment length polymorphism（PCR-RFLP） analysis was used to detect the XRCC1 polymorphism Arg399Gln，and logistic re-gression was carried out to analyze the relationship between the polymorphism and susceptibility to hepatocellular carcinoma （HCC）.Results The frequency of the variant Gln allele was 23.7% among liver cancer families and 13.2% among normal families.Allele dis-tributions did not differ significantly between the two groups（P>0.05）， and genotype distributions conformed to Hardy-Weinberg e-quilibrium.For members of normal families，the risk of HCC for people with Arg/Gln was 1.622 times that of people with Arg/Arg （95% CI=0.475~5.541，P=0.440）.For members of HCC families，the risk of HCC for people with Arg/Gln was 1.198 times that of people with Arg/Arg （95% CI＝0.362~3.968，P=0.768），and the risk of HCC for people with Gln/Gln was 2.964 times that of people with Arg/Arg （95% CI＝0.434~20.220，P=0.267）.Conclusion Analysis of the Arg399Gln polymorphism of the XRCC1 gene shows that，among liver cancer family groups in Fusui county，there is a trend towards greater HCC risk  among people with Arg/Gln and Gln/Gln genotypes than among people with the Arg/Arg genotype.However，there are no significant correlations between the Arg399Gln polymorphism and susceptibility to HCC.

Key words: HCC, DNA repair gene, XRCC1, SNP, Genetic susceptibility