Uterine leiomyomas are the most common gynecologic benign tumors of the female genital tract that cause a variety of health problems including, abnormal menstrual bleeding, pelvic pain, placenta displacement, premature labor, and miscarriages. Recently, studies showed that recurrent somatic mutations in MED12 exon 2 are the major cause of uterine leiomyomas in different ethnic groups. In order to validate these results in Iranian population, we performed mutational analysis of exon 2 and the flanking intronic regions by using single-strand conformational polymorphism (SSCP) and sequencing analyses in a series of 103 uterine leiomyomas samples. MED12 gene was mutated in 31.07 % of the uterine leiomyomas. Mutations were consisted of 20 missense (62.5 %) and 12 in-frame deletion (37.5 %) mutations and were not detected in normal myometrial tissue. Although this is the lowest mutation frequency reported so far, MED12 mutations are associated with fibroid pathogenesis in the studied population. Understanding the molecular mechanisms responsible for the pathogenesis of uterine leiomyoma will play an important role in designing new therapeutic strategies.
Keywords: MED12 gene; Mutation; Uterine leiomyomas.