angiotensinogen and Asthma

Various peptidases, including angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE), inactivate some inflammatory peptides that are considered to influence the pathogenesis of atopic diseases. This enzyme is also involved in the conversion or activation of 2 bronchoconstriction mediators: angiotensin II from angiotensinogen and endothelin (ET), respectively.. We tested a hypothesis that asthma or other atopic diseases are associated with insertion/deletion ACE, M235T angiotensinogen, and TaqI ET-1 gene polymorphisms.. A case-control approach was used in the study. Healthy subjects (141 persons) were used as control subjects, and 231 patients with histories of atopic asthma, allergic rhinitis, atopic dermatitis, or a combination thereof were studied. ACE genotype was determined by PCR, angiotensinogen M235T and ET-1 by PCR, and restriction analysis by AspI and TaqI, respectively.. We found the significant association of the insertion/deletion polymorphism of the ACE, as well as that of M235T polymorphism of the angiotensinogen genes, with the group of patients with atopic diseases ( P =.0025 and P =.0204, respectively). No difference was proved for the intron 4 (position 8000) polymorphism in the ET-1 gene when comparing the atopic patients with the control group (P =.1774). A significant difference was found between groups of patients with both asthma and rhinitis and patients without both respiratory atopic diseases (P =.0033).. It follows that the examined polymorphisms in the genes for ACE, angiotensinogen, and ET-1 could participate in the etiopathogenesis of atopic diseases.

Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Alleles; Angiotensinogen; Asthma; Case-Control Studies; Dermatitis, Atopic; Endothelin-1; Female; Gene Frequency; Genotype; Humans; Hypersensitivity, Immediate; Male; Middle Aged; Mutation, Missense; Peptidyl-Dipeptidase A; Point Mutation; Polymerase Chain Reaction; Polymorphism, Genetic; Restriction Mapping; Rhinitis, Allergic, Seasonal

The influence of renin-angiotensin system (RAS) component gene polymorphism in the pathogenesis of bronchial asthma was investigated in an association study involving 119 bronchial asthma patients and 208 control subjects. The selected RAS polymorphisms were angiotensinogen (Agt) T235/M235 and angiotensin I-converting enzyme (ACE) insertion/deletion (I/D). The control allelic frequencies of the Agt T235/M235 (0.84/0.16) and ACE I/D (0.63/0.37) in this study were similar to the previous reports in Japanese normal population. The allelic frequencies of the Agt T235/M235 (0.84/0.16) and ACE I/D (0.65/ 0.35) among the asthma patients were not significantly different from those among the control subjects. There was no association between severity of bronchial asthma and the selected RAS component gene polymorphism. From these data, we conclude that in the Japanese population, the RAS component gene polymorphism is not associated with increased risk for bronchial asthma.

Topics: Adult; Alleles; Angiotensinogen; Asthma; Case-Control Studies; Female; Gene Frequency; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Peptidyl-Dipeptidase A; Polymerase Chain Reaction; Polymorphism, Genetic; Renin-Angiotensin System; Risk Factors