ABSTRACT
Background To explore the relationship between polymorphism of APOE gene in traumatic brain injury(TBI)patients suffering from traffic accident and the outcome of TBI.Methods TBI patients were randomly selected in this study with caxe-wntrol trial. The genotype of APOE allele was tested by a polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism ( PCR-RFLP), and the association between different genotypes of APOE alleles and outcome of TBI patients, were analyed.Results In TBI group frequency of APOE ε2 allele was 0. 1010, and frequency of APOE ε2/ε3 was 0. 1596.Both of these results were significantly higher than that in normal people (APOE epsilon 2 was 0. 0050, APOE ε2/ε3 was 0. 0100) (P＜0.05). Frequency of APOE ε2 and APOE ε2/ε3 in TBI group who died was 0. 1970 and 0. 2727. These were significantly high compared to TBI patients who had good recovery.Conclusions APOE allele ε2 and APOE genotype ε2/ε3alleles indicate a poor prognosis of traumatic brain injury patients.