title: HDC gene polymorphisms are associated with age at natural menopause in Caucasian women.
abstract: Histidine decarboxylase gene (HDC) encodes histidine decarboxylase which is the crucial enzyme for the biosynthesis of histidine. Studies have shown that histamine is likely to be involved in the regulation of reproduction system. To find the possible correlation between HDC gene and AANM (age at natural menopause), we selected 265 postmenopausal women from 131 nuclear families and performed a transmission disequilibrium test. Significant within-family associations with AANM for SNP rs854163 and SNP rs854158 of HDC gene were observed (P values=0.0018 and 0.0197, respectively). After 1000 permutations, SNP rs854163 still remained significant within-family association with AANM. Consistently, we also detected a significant within-family association between haplotype block 2 (defined by SNP rs854163 and rs860526) and AANM in the haplotype analyses (P value=0.0397). Our results suggest that the HDC gene polymorphisms are significantly associated with AANM in Caucasian women.
authors.affiliation: The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, and Institute of Molecular Genetics, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, PR China.
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Dong-Hai
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Xiong
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.forename: Fang
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Robert R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Recker
authors.forename: Hong-Wen
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Deng
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D005260:Female; D006640:Histidine Decarboxylase / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D015810:Linkage Disequilibrium; D008593:Menopause / Q000208:ethnology / Q000235:genetics*; D008875:Middle Aged; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D044465:White People / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D006640:Histidine Decarboxylase