Background: Nephropathy is one of the major complications among the patients having type 1 or long term Type 2 diabetes and there are various studies that suggest its genetic predisposition. A 287 bp insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism of the gene encoding angiotensin-I converting enzyme (ACE) is shown to have association with diabetic nephropathy.
Aim: To identify the association of ACE I/D polymorphism with subjects having diabetic nephropathy.
Materials and methods: The present study examined the prevalence of ACE insertion/deletion polymorphism among 91 Bengali individuals from Eastern India. Among them 30 individuals belong to diabetic nephropathy (DN), 30 individuals having diabetes without nephropathy (DM) and 31 normal controls. The DNA samples of studied subjects were genotyped using polymerase chain reaction.
Results: The frequency of DD, ID and II genotypes in patients having diabetic nephropathy (DN) were found to be 26.7%, 53.3% and 20.0% respectively, whereas the same for only diabetic patients (DM) were 26.7%, 50.0% and 23.3% respectively. The frequencies of the same genotypes among the normal controls were found to be 9.68%, 64.5% and 25.8% respectively. Inspite of a slightly higher odds ratio for DD genotypes among DM and DN subjects in comparison to the normal group the distribution pattern of DD genotype did not differ significantly within the three cohorts. The frequency of D allele among the patients having diabetic nephropathy, diabetic without nephropathy and control subjects was found to be 0.533, 0.516 and 0.420 respectively. This distribution pattern also did not differ significantly (?2 =1.859, p>0.05).
Conclusion: No significant association was found between ACE I/D polymorphism with diabetic nephropathy patients from Bengali caste population