Objective: Oxidative stress has been postulated as a major contributor to placental hypoperfusion and ischemia in pre-eclampsia (PE). Reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated during placental ischemia can cause oxidative damage to nucleic acids. Base excision repair (BER) and nucleotide excision repair (NER) are major pathways responsible for removing the oxidative DNA damage. Polymorphisms in DNA repair genes may be associated with differences in the repair efficiency of DNA damage.
Study design: In order to investigate the possible association between DNA repair genes and PE susceptibility, we analyzed genotype and allele distributions of APE1-148, XRCC1-194, XRCC1-399 and XPD-751 genes in 101 patients with PE and 107 healthy women. Differences in genotype distributions and allele frequencies in the cases and the controls were compared for statistical significance using the chi(2)-test. Haplotype frequencies were estimated using a contingency chi(2)-test. One-way ANOVA and Mann-Whitney U-test were used for the statistics of the clinical and biochemical parameters.
Results: No significant association between PE and the variant alleles of APE1 codon 148 (OR: 0.77, 95% CI=0.51-1.15), XRCC1 codon 194 (OR: 0.64, 95% CI=0.30-1.37), XRCC1 codon 399 (OR: 1.16, 95% CI=0.78-1.74) and XPD codon 751 (OR: 1.21, 95% CI=0.81-1.80) was observed. Results of our haplotype analysis demonstrated that there is a high linkage disequilibrium (D': 1.0, r(2)=0.042) between the haplotypes of XRCC1 codon 194 and codon 399 markers.
Conclusions: These preliminary results suggest that the polymorphic variants of APE1-148, XRCC1-194, XRCC1-399, and XPD-751 genes are not significant risk factors for PE development.