engleski

The lack of association of GABRA2 polymorphism and alcohol dependence in Croatian population

gamma-aminobutyric acidA (GABAA) receptors, the major fast inhibitory neurotransmitter receptors in the brain, are implicated in the acute and chronic effects of alcohol including tolerance, dependence and withdrawal. Recent studies have suggested a linkage of alcohol dependence to the gene encoding GABAA receptor 2 subunit (GABRA2), on chromosome 4p. Therefore we examined the association of alcohol dependence to rs9291283 (hCV8262290) polymorphism, located in the intron 3 of GABRA2 gene, that has been previously reported to be implicated in alcoholism. This study enrolled 379 (303 male and 76 female) alcohol- dependent (diagnosis of alcoholism was made according to DSM-IV criteria) and 226 (198 male and 28 female) healthy subjects of the Croatian origin. Alcohol-dependent patients were further subdivided according to the early/late onset of alcohol drinking, as well as to the presence/absence of aggressive behavior. Genotyping was performed by using TaqMan Real-Time allelic discrimination technique after extraction of DNA from the whole blood with a salting out procedure. There were no significant differences in the distribution of genotypes or in the frequency of different allele carriers for tested polymorphism between alcohol-dependent and control individuals, as well as between different subsets of alcoholics. The results have not provided supporting evidence for the potential involvement of the rs9291283 (hCV8262290) GABRA2 polymorphism in the alcohol dependence. However, since these are preliminary results, further studies with enlarged groups should be conducted in order to find a possible association of investigated polymorphism and alcoholism in Croatian population.

alcoholism; GABA-A receptor; GABRA2 gene; polymorphism; Croatian population

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