Association Between Clusterin Gene Polymorphisms and Epilepsy in a Han Chinese Population.

BACKGROUND: Clusterin (CLU) is implicated in the inflammatory and apoptotic mechanisms of epilepsy, and the CLU gene has been associated with a number of other neurological diseases. In this study, we investigated the genetic association of CLU polymorphisms with epilepsy in a Han Chinese population.

METHODS: A total of 249 epileptic patients and 289 healthy controls were included in this study. Three CLU single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs: rs11136000, rs9314349, and rs9331949) were selected and genotyped with the SNaPshot assay, and their associations with epilepsy were evaluated.

RESULTS: There was no statistically significant association between any of the CLU SNPs and epilepsy in our small cohort. In addition, no significant association was detected between any of the CLU SNPs and epilepsy after stratification based on gender, age of onset, temporal lobe epilepsy, and drug-resistant epilepsy.

CONCLUSIONS: Our study failed to detect an association between CLU polymorphisms (rs11136000, rs9314349, and rs9331949) and epilepsy in a Han Chinese population. Further investigations with a larger sample size would be valuable to confirm our results.