Abstract
Purpose:
Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) plays an important role in the pathogenesis of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy (PCV). Recently, a VEGF gene polymorphism and VEGF receptor-2 gene polymorphism were identified to associate with AMD. We aimed to investigate whether the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in VEGF gene (rs3025039, rs699947) and its receptor (rs2071559) are associated with PCV in a Thai population.
Methods:
A case-control study included 98 Thai patients with PCV and 104 age- and gender-matched controls with no any retinopathy.. The diagnoses of PCV were made based on fundus examination, fluorescein angiography and indocyanine green angiography findings. The genotypic profiles of the three polymorphisms were obtained using a real-time polymerase chain reaction assay. The allelic and genotypic association between the polymorphisms and PCV were compared.
Results:
No evident association was found in the allele frequencies of any individual SNP between patients and controls; the combined p values in each genotype group were greater than 0.05.
Conclusions:
The findings of this study found no significant genetic association between the VEGF genes and PCV across Asian populations. Further studies of comprehensive VEGF gene variations are required to characterize the susceptibility of the VEGF gene in the pathogenesis of PCV.
Keywords: 412 age-related macular degeneration •
539 genetics