Is the presence of retinopathy of practical value in defining cases of diabetic nephropathy in genetic association studies? The experience with the ACE insertion/deletion polymorphism in 53 studies comprising 17,791 subjects.
ACE gene polymorphism was analyzed by polymerase chain reaction in 460 individuals consisting of 174 cases of DN, 175 cases of Type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM), and 111 controls.
Association between angiotensin-converting enzyme gene polymorphisms and diabetic nephropathy: case-control, haplotype, and family-based study in three European populations.
However, haplotype analyses revealed a near doubling in the prevalence of the A.T.D risk haplotype in case subjects (0.136) compared with control subjects (0.075) (P = 0.009), thus providing first evidence for a disease haplotype for advanced diabetic nephropathy at the ACE locus.