The prevalence of combined vascular endothelial growth factor, endothelial nitric oxide synthase and thrombin-activatable fibrinolysis inhibitor genetic polymorphisms among Egyptian patients with recurrent spontaneous abortion.

AIM: As angiogenesis is an essential step for chorionic villi formation. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is essential for endothelial cell proliferation. Endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) is a powerful playmaker in hypoxia-induced angiogenesis. Thrombin-activatable fibrinolysis inhibitor (TAFI) regulates both fibrinolysis and inflammation. Genetic alterations of these factors may lead to recurrent spontaneous abortion (RSA). We aimed to investigate the combined genetic variants of VEGF G-1154A and two eNOS genetic variants: T-786C promoter region and intron 4 variable number of tandom repeats in addition to TAFI C-1040T among RSA patients.

METHODS

The study included 50 patients with RSA and 50 healthy controls. Polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism were used for genotyping.

RESULTS

Both genetic alterations of eNOS confirmed at least a sixfold increase of RSA risk. Interestingly, they were associated with TAFI C-1040Tgenetic variant in 21 patients, eight of them had both studied eNOS genetic alterations and TAFI C-1040Tgenetic variant, while each eNOS genetic variant associated with TAFI C-1040Tconfirmed an almost one and half fold increase risk of RSA.

CONCLUSION

These findings highlighted the role of eNOS and nitric oxide metabolism in RSA and opened the gate to investigate the interaction of vasoconstrictive and fibrinolytic inhibitor systems.