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Acta Medica Okayama, vol.61, no.3, pp.153-160, 2007 (SCI-Expanded)
The genetic background predisposing pregnant women to pre-eclampsia/ eclampsia (PE/E) is still unknown. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether there is an association between the TNF-alpha-308 and 850 polymorphisms and PE or eclampsia. In this study, 40 cases of eclampsia, 113 cases of PE and 80 normotensive control cases were genotyped for the TNF-alpha-G-308A and C-850 polymorphisms. At position 308, the replacement of Guanine with Adenosine was denoted as TNF2. We found a significant difference between the TNF2 allele frequencies of the eclamptic, pre-eclamptic and normotensive controls. TNF2 (AA) polymorphism frequency was significantly higher among the eclamptics and pre-eclamptics (control: 5%, PE: 13.3%, E: 12.9%). A significantly different genotype distribution of C-850T polymorphism was observed between the PE/E and control groups, with the frequency of the variant TT genotype being significantly reduced in the preeclamptics (PE: 17%; E: 17.5%) when compared with the control group (24.3%). We have demonstrated an association between TNF-α polymorphisms and pre-eclampsia susceptibility. However, it is not known whether C-850T polymorphism has a functional effect on the TNF-α gene. In addition, it was not possible to determine whether this polymorphism promotes the progression from PE to eclampsia because of no statistically significant difference between eclampsia and the controls. Copyright© 2007 by Okayama University Medical School.