Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Gene Polymorphisms and Risk of Neovascular Age-Related Macular Degeneration in a Chinese Cohort

Aims: To evaluate the association between vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) gene polymorphism and the risk of neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in a case-control study in a Chinese cohort. Methods: We genotyped 4 common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), namely -460T/C (rs833061), +405C/G (rs2010963), +674C/T (rs1413711) and +936C/T (rs3025039), simultaneously detected 7 tag SNPs (tSNPs) in the VEGF gene, in 159 neovascular AMD patients and 140 age-and sex-matched control subjects. Genetic analyses for an additive, dominant and recessive model were performed on all available genotype data. All the possible haplotypes of these 11 SNPs were detected. Results: No evident association was found in the allele frequencies of any individual SNP between patients and controls; the combined p values in each genotype group were greater than 0.05. Haplotype analyses of these SNPs did not provide any evidence for an association with the risk of neovascular AMD in this Chinese cohort (p > 0.05). Conclusions: Detection of 4 common SNPs and 7 tSNPs in the VEGF gene did not find any statistically significant association with neovascular AMD in the Chinese cohort. Further studies of comprehensive VEGF gene variations are required to characterize the susceptibility of the VEGF gene in the pathogenesis of AMD. Copyright (C) 2010 S. Karger AG, Basel