Association of functional SNP-1562C>T in MMP9 promoter with proliferative diabetic retinopathy in north Indian type 2 diabetes mellitus patients.

OBJECTIVE: Retinal angiogenesis is a hallmark of diabetic retinopathy. Matrix Metalloproteinases (MMPs) are involved in degradation of extracellular matrix (ECM). Functional SNP-1562C>T in the promoter of the MMP-9 gene results increase in transcriptional activity. The present work was designed to evaluate the contribution of functional SNP-1562C>T of MMP-9 gene to the risk of proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients in north Indian Population.

METHODS: This Case control study comprised of a total of 645 individuals in which 320 were T2DM patients out of which 73 had PDR, 98 had non- proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR), 149 T2DM cases without any eye related disease (DM) and 325 non diabetic healthy individuals as controls (non DM controls). Genotyping for SNP-1562C>T of MMP-9 was done by polymerase chain reactions followed by restriction analyses with specific endonucleases (PCR-RFLP). DNA sequencing was used to ascertain PCR-RFLP results.

RESULTS: T allele frequency in PDR patients was 32.1%, 20.4% in NPDR, 15.4% in DM and 13.7% in controls. Statistically significant difference was observed in both allele and genotype distribution between the PDR versus non-DM control group (p<0.0001 by T allele; p=0.002 by TT and p<0.0001 by CT genotype).

CONCLUSIONS: The present study suggests that the functional SNP-1562C>T in the promoter of the MMP-9 gene could be regarded as a major risk factor for PDR as increased MMP-9 production from high expressing T allele may promote retinal angiogenesis.