Objectives: Preterm delivery (PTD) is one of the important challenges for perinatal medicine due to prematurity and associated complications. The mechanisms leading to the PTD occurrence are not fully clarified and it is assumed that PTD is a complex phenomenon caused by many different pathophysiological factors. Nowadays, an important role is attributed to genetic determinants of PTD, pointing to possible relevance of polymorphic variants of candidate genes to participate in the etiology of PTD. The aim of the study was to assess the relevance of +3953C > T IL-1β and 86 bp VNTR IL-1RN gene polymorphisms in the etiology of PTD in Polish women.
Material and methods: Study group consisted of 150 women (mean age 29.2 ± 5.6 years, mean weeks of gestational age 33.7 ± 2.8 gw.) with preterm delivery (22 + 0 - 36 + 6 gw.). To the control group 150 healthy pregnant women (mean age 29.0 ± 3.7 years, mean weeks of gestational age 39.3 ± 1.2 gw.) who delivered > 37 gw. were enrolled. All investigated polymorphisms were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP).
Results: The interesting observation was the notice of overrepresentation of 2/2 genotype of IL-1RN gene in the control group (8.0 vs. 3.3%, p = 0.06) and 2 allele in the control group (25.0 vs. 20.0%, p = 0.07).
Conclusions: The +3953C > T polymorphism of IL-1β gene probably is not connected with the risk of preterm delivery. The study results points to the possible modulating effect of mutated IL-1RN* 2 allele (86 bp VNTR polymorphism) of IL-1RN gene in decreased risk of preterm delivery.
Keywords: genetic variants; interleukin; preterm delivery.