angiotensinogen and Dermatitis--Atopic

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