Objective: To identify the relationship between genetic polymorphisms of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha (PPARalpha) intron 1A/C and metabolic syndrome (MS) in a Chinese population.
Methods: A population-based case-control study was conducted in Suzhou city, Changshu County and Ganyu County in Jiangsu Province China, on the basis of an ongoing cohort study and 2348 cases were investigated. After the exclusion of the known MS cases, 1847 eligible subjects were successfully followed-up and their waist circumference (WC), body mass index, blood pressure, total cholesterol (TC), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), triglycerides (TG) and fasting plasma glucose were measured. Newly diagnosed MS patients were recruited as cases, controls were individual matched with each case. TaqMan fluorescence probe method was used to detect the genetic polymorphism of PPARalpha intron 1A/C.
Results: The current analysis consisted of 389 MS patients and 389 matched controls. The C allele gene frequency of PPARalpha intron 1A/C in the case group was 22.24% (173/778), lower than that in the control group, which was 24.68% (192/778); whereas the difference was not statistically significant (chi(2) = 1.29, P > 0.05). In the genotypes AA + AC and CC, MS patients were accounted for 50.70% (363/716) and 41.94% (26/62) and hyperglycemia accounted for 21.37% (153/716) and 11.29% (7/62). Compared to the genotypes AA + AC, genotype CC was observed to be inversely associated with hyperglycemia (the adjusted OR = 0.39; 95%CI: 0.17 - 0.90) but not related to the occurrence of MS (OR = 0.75; 95%CI: 0.44 - 1.28) and other components of MS e.g., abdominal obesity (the adjusted OR = 0.67; 95%CI: 0.38 - 1.17), hypertriglyceridemia (the adjusted OR = 0.97; 95%CI: 0.53 - 1.76), low HDL-C (the adjusted OR = 0.72; 95%CI: 0.41 - 1.25) and hypertension (the adjusted OR = 0.72; 95%CI: 0.42 - 1.25) all P values > 0.05.
Conclusion: C allele of PPARalpha intron 1A/C is not found to be associated with MS in the Chinese population. But comparing with the genotypes AA + AC, there is an inverse association between CC genotype and hyperglycemia.