Abstract
BACKGROUND Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a major microvascular complication of diabetes. Pentraxin 3 (PTX3) is a member of the acute-phase reactants superfamily and altered plasma levels of PTX3 are associated with DN. We performed a case-control study to analyze the relationship between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in PTX3 and the risk for DN in patients with type 2 diabetes. MATERIAL AND METHODS The study included 135 DN patients, 155 non-diabetic nephropathy (NDN) patients, and 152 normal controls (NC) (N=442). We genotyped eight PTX3 SNPs (rs2305619, rs2120243, rs1456099, rs7634847, rs1840680, rs2316706, rs2316709, and rs7616177) using the ABI PRISM SNapshot method. RESULTS The genotype frequencies of rs2305619 and rs2120243 differed significantly between the DN and the NDN groups (p=0.017 and p=0.033, respectively). Patients with the GG variant of rs2305619 showed 4.078-fold higher susceptibility to DN than those with the AA variant (OR=4.078, 95% CI=1.370-12.135, p=0.012); patients with the AA variant of rs2120243 had a lower risk of developing DN (OR=0.213, 95% CI=0.055-0.826, p=0.025). Haplotype analysis showed an association between the CAGGG haplotype in block 1 with DN (p=0.0319). CONCLUSIONS Our findings suggested that PTX3 polymorphisms were associated with an increased risk for DN in Chinese patients with type 2 diabetes.