Endocrine Abstracts

Graves’ disease (GD) is an organ-specific autoimmune disorder of the thyroid due to the presence of circulating anti-thyroid-stimulating-hormone receptor stimulating autoantibodies that lead to hyperthyroidism. Involvement of the genetic variants of RHO genes in GD has not been examined yet. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate possible associations between RHO gene polymorphisms and GD in a Turkish population. A total of 128 patients with GD and 163 healthy control subjects were included to this study. Genomic DNA was extracted from whole peripheral blood samples and analyzed using the dynamic array system (Fluidigm, South San Francisco, CA, USA). The Chi-square or Fisher’s exact tests were used for calculation of the differences in frequencies. The Bonferroni correction for multiple testing was used for polymorphism studies, and P < 0.0071 (0.05/7) was considered statistically significant. We investigated 7 RHO gene polymorphisms. Neither genotype distributions nor the allele frequencies for the RHOA rs6784820, RHOA rs974495, RHOA rs2177268, RHOC rs11102522, RHOD rs2282502 (Asp88 Glu), RHOD rs34270544 (Arg144 Gln), and RND3 (RHOE) rs816890 polymorphisms showed a significant association between the groups. This study showed for the first time that there were no associations between studied RHO gene polymorphisms and the risk of developing GD in the Turkish population.

This study was supported by a project (SBAG-213S021) from the TUBITAK, Ankara, Turkey.