Significant association of TH01 allele 9.3 and SIDS.
Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) constitutes a considerable percentage of infant death of unknown etiology. Individual catecholamine response variation is suspected to play a role in SIDS. TH01 is a tetrameric short tandem repeat marker in the tyrosine hydroxylase gene, which regulates gene expression and catecholamine production with allele 9.3 exerting a particularly strong effect on noradrenaline production. We investigated in an age-controlled study the TH01 allele frequencies in 127 cases of SIDS and 406 control cases to assess whether in SIDS cases a distinct TH01 allele distribution could be determined as has been reported by a previous study. We found that genotypes containing one or two 9.3 alleles were significantly more frequent in SIDS patients (58.2%) than in control subjects (48.4%, p=0.038), whereas all other alleles were more frequent in the control subjects. Our findings support the notion that there exists a significant association between TH01 gene configuration and SIDS.
Institute of Forensic Medicine, University Hospital Bonn, Stiftsplatz 12, 53111 Bonn, Germany. cornelius.courts@uni-bonn.de
Cornelius
C
Courts
Burkhard
B
Madea
D016022:Case-Control Studies; D017931:DNA Primers; D053803:Forensic Genetics; D005787:Gene Frequency; D005819:Genetic Markers; D005838:Genotype; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D012621:Seasons; D013398:Sudden Infant Death / Q000235:genetics*; D020080:Tandem Repeat Sequences; D014446:Tyrosine 3-Monooxygenase / Q000235:genetics*
D017931:DNA Primers; D005819:Genetic Markers; D014446:Tyrosine 3-Monooxygenase