BACKGROUND: 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. OBJECTIVE: We tested a hypothesis that asthma or other atopic diseases are associated with insertion/deletion ACE, M235T angiotensinogen, and TaqI ET-1 gene polymorphisms. METHODS: 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. RESULTS: 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). CONCLUSION: It follows that the examined polymorphisms in the genes for ACE, angiotensinogen, and ET-1 could participate in the etiopathogenesis of atopic diseases.

Institute of Pathological Physiology Medical Faculty Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic

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Association of the angiotensin I converting enzyme (ACE) gene polymorphisms with recurrent aphthous stomatitis in the Czech population: case-control study