The Association of Mitofusion-2 Gene Polymorphisms with Susceptibility of Essential Hypertension in Northern Han Chinese Population

Background: Mitofusion-2 (Mfn2) played an important role in regulating vascular smooth muscle cells proliferation, insulin resistance and endoplasmic reticulum stress, which were found to be involved in the development of hypertension. So we inferred that the Mfn2 gene may participate in the pathogenesis of hypertension. The aim of this study was to determine whether common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in Mfn2 gene were associated with essential hypertension (EH) in northern Han Chinese.

Methods: We genotyped 6 tagging SNPs of Mfn2 gene (rs2336384, rs2295281, rs17037564, rs2236057, rs2236058 and rs3766741) with the TaqMan assay in 626 hypertensive patients and 618 controls.

Results: Logistic regression analysis indicated that CC+CA genotype of rs2336384 and AA+AG genotype of rs2236057 were significantly associated with increased risk of EH (OR=1.617, P=0.005; OR=1.418, P=0.031, respectively). GG genotype of rs2236058 and GG+CG genotype of rs3766741 were found to be significantly associated with decreased risk of EH (OR=0.662, P=0.023; OR=0.639, P=0.024).When stratified by gender, for rs2336384, rs2236057 and rs2236058, significant association was observed in males, but not in females. Haplotype analysis indicated that the CCAACC haplotype was positively correlated with EH and there was a negative correlation between ACAGGG haplotype and EH.

Conclusions: This study demonstrated that Mfn2 gene polymorphisms were associated with essential hypertension in northern Han Chinese population, especially in male subjects.