Investigation of the relationship between MTHFR, IRS and CALCA gene polymorphisms and development of diabetic nephropathy in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between MTHFR, IRS and CALCA gene polymorphisms and development of diabetic nephropathy (DN) in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM). Our study included 93 patients with type 2 DM diagnosed as having nephropathy and 95 controls diagnosed with type 2 DM without development of DN. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) were used to determine the genotype distributions of MTHFR, IRS and CALCA gene polymorphisms. The results showed no statistically significant difference between DN patients and type 2 DM controls in terms of genotype distributions of MTHFR (C677T, A1298C), IRS (IRS-1 Gly972Arg, IRS-2 Gly1057Asp) and CALCA T692C gene polymorphisms (p > 0.05). However, in terms of allele frequencies for the MTHFR A1298C gene, the frequency of the C allele was significantly higher in the DN patients compared to the controls (p < 0.05). In the IRS-2 Gly1057Asp gene polymorphism, the G allele frequency was significantly higher in the DN patients than in the type 2 DM controls (p < 0.05). In the DN group, the individuals with one or less mutant alleles were significantly more than in the control group in terms of the IRS-2 Gly1057Asp gene polymorphism (p < 0.05). The C allele frequency for the MTHFR A1298C gene polymorphism and the G allele frequency for the IRS-2 Gly1057Asp gene polymorphism were indicated to be potential a genetic risk factor for the development of DN in patients with type 2 DM who developed DN.

KEYWORDS:

• DN
• MTHFR
• IRS
• CALCA
• PCR
• RFLP

Acknowledgments

The study was performed in the departments of Biophysics, department of Internal Medicine (Nephrology) and department of Internal Medicine (Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases) in Trakya University.

Disclosure statement

We declare that there is no conflict of interest with any financial organisation regarding the material discussed in the manuscript.