Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is one of the most serious chronic complications of diabetes mellitus characterized by persistent albuminuria, raised arterial blood pressure, a lowered glomerular filtration rate, and high-risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The vascular genes (Angiotensin-converting enzyme) ACE, and (aldosterone synthase) CYP11B2 are involved in alterations in vascular endothelium, and are suggested to play a role in the susceptibility of diabetic nephropathy. The aim of our study was to find out the role of ACE (I/D) and CYP11B2 −344C/T polymorphisms in genetic susceptibility of diabetic nephropathy in Belarusian population.

Methods: A total of 59 cases with diabetes types 1 and 2 and 16 control subjects were enrolled for our study. We divided all patients into three groups: 16 normal controls, 31 without DN, and 21 with DN. DNA was isolated from peripheral blood leucocytes, and genotyped using allele specific PCR (ACE I/D) or PCR (CYP11B2) methods.

Results: Genotype frequencies of the ACE (I/D) polymorphysm were in accordance with the Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium. In subjects with DN, the frequencies of the DD, ID and II genotypes were 0.293, 0.373, and 0.320 respectively. The allelic frequency of the D and I allele in the nephropathy group was 0.523 and 0.386 and 0.594 and 0.406 in the control group.

We found no significant association of the ACE I/D and CYP11B2 −344C/T polymorphism with DN in genotype, allele, dominant, and recessive models.

Conclusion: Our preliminary data did not reveal significant association of the ACE I/D and CYP11B2 −344C/T polymorphism with nephropathy in patients with diabetes. However, more investigations are required to further this association.