Relationship between PTEN and gestational diabetes in Asian Indians womens

Gestational diabetes mellitus [GDM] is defined as glucose intolerance of variable severity with onset of first recognition during pregnancy. GDM occurs in at least 30% of women with a family history of T2DM/GDM, suggesting that some women are genetically predisposed to develop GDM. Phosphatase and tensin homolog [PTEN] on chromosome 10 is a tumor-suppressor gene. Studies have demonstrated that PTEN dysfunction affects the function of insulin. However, the relationship between GDM and PTEN has not been studied. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between PTEN and GDM in Asian Indian women. The case-control study used PCR-RFLP analysis to assess the PTEN?9C/G polymorphism in 150 GDM cases and 150 controls [non-GDM]. No alleles or genotypes were detected at statistically significant frequencies. All subjects were normal, and no variants were detected in any of the pregnant women. In conclusion, PTEN has no role in GDM, consistent with previous studies

Syndrome of malnutrition-inflammation complex in chronic alcoholics.

Several studies have reported elevated serum ferritin levels in patients of chronic alcohol abuse. We hypothesized that serum ferritin may be acting as a marker of acute phase reactant, reflecting the inflammatory status of patients of chronic alcohol abuse, rather than as a marker of iron overload . Hence we correlated serum ferritin levels with interleukin 6 (IL-6), interleukin 1 (IL-1) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF -α ) which are markers of inflammation. Serum ferritin and IL-6 levels were significantly elevated at the time of admission. The elevation of IL-6 correlated well with the increase in ferritin levels (r=0.78, p<0.01). Serum iron levels were not significantly different before and after abstinence from alcohol. We also speculated that the inflammatory status was associated with the malnutrition that is observed in alcohol abuse. Therefore we studied serum total protein, albumin, prealbumin and transferrin levels as markers of nutrition in patients of chronic alcohol abuse. Serum levels of all these nutritional parameters increased significantly after 8 weeks of abstinence from alcohol and were accompanied by reduced levels of ferritin and IL-6. Hence it is possible that a malnutrition inflammation complex like syndrome exists in patients of alcohol abuse.