Abstract
Histamine plays a major role in allergic disorders, including asthma. A major pathway of histamine biotransformation in the lungs is mediated by histamine N-methyltransferase (HNMT). We investigated the association of a functional SNP C314T; a SNP A929G, a (CA)n repeat in intron 5, and a novel (CA)n repeat (BV677277), 7.5 kb downstream of the HNMT gene with asthma and its associated traits such as total serum IgE levels in a case-control as well as in a family-based study design. In contrast to a previous study, no association was observed for the polymorphisms investigated with asthma (P>0.05). When haplotypes were constructed for these loci and compared, no significant difference was observed in the distribution between cases and controls. In the family-based design, no biased transmission was observed for any of the polymorphisms and haplotypes with asthma using the additive model of inheritance in family-based association test (FBAT). Thus, consistent with the case-control findings, the polymorphisms and haplotypes in the HNMT gene are not associated with asthma in the Indian population.
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Acknowledgements
We thank our collaborating physicians Drs. S.K. Sharma, N.K. Bhatia, and P.V. Niphadkar for helping us in sample collection. We also thank all patients, their family members, and healthy volunteers for participating in this study. We thank Ms. Abha Soni, Mr. Amrendra Gupta, and Ms. Sanober Nahid for assistance. We acknowledge the Functional Genomics Unit of Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) and The Center for Genomics Applications (TCGA), Delhi, for helping in sequencing and genotyping. The financial support from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR Task force project No. SMM0006), Government of India, is greatly acknowledged.
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Accession No.: BV677277
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Sharma, S., Mann, D., Singh, T.P. et al. Lack of association of histamine-N-methyltransferase (HNMT) polymorphisms with asthma in the Indian population. J Hum Genet 50, 611–617 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10038-005-0302-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10038-005-0302-4
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