The association of glucocorticoid receptor gene polymorphism with the prognosis of myasthenia gravis / 中华神经科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the association of glucocorticoid receptor (GR) polymorphisms (BclI)with the prognosis of myasthenia gravis (MG).Methods We totally enrolled 74 patients diagnosed as MG from the Department of Neurology,Beijing Shijitan Hospital between 2002 and 2014.Of them,54 patients started with ocular MG and 20 patients started with general MG.MG patients were divided into recurrence group and non-recurrence group according to the progression at two years after onset.Patients with simple ocular symptom at disease onset were further divided into generalized MG (GMG) group and single ocular MG (OMG) group according to disease progression or not.The GMG group was divided into two groups (≤6 months,7-24 months) according to the progression time of generalization.The GMG group was further divided into three groups (limbs,throat,both limbs and throat) according to the first symptom of generalization.The genotypes of GR were determined by polymerase chain reaction and nucleotide sequence determination.Results The frequencies of three genotypes (GG,CG,CC) in BclI were 57.7％,34.6％,7.7％ in recurrence MG and 64.6％,31.3％,4.1％ in non-recurrence MG respectively.The difference in distribution of the genotypes between the two groups was not statistically significant (x2 =0.570,P =0.750).The frequencies of G and C allele were 75.0％ and 25.0％ in recurrence MG,and 80.2％ and 19.8％ in non-recurrence MG.The difference in distribution of the alleles between the two groups was not statistically significant (x2 =0.540,P =0.462).The frequencies of three genotypes GG,GC and CC were 55.9％,35.3％,8.8％ in GMG and 2/6,4/6,0/6 in OMG respectively.The frequencies of G and C allele were 73.5％ and 26.5 ％ in GMG,and 8/12,4/12 in OMG.The difference in distribution of the genotypes and alleles between the two groups was not statistically significant (x2 =2.278,P =0.320;x2 =0.241,P =0.624).The frequencies of three genotypes GG,GC,CC were respectively 61.9％,28.6％,9.5％ and 3/6,3/6,0/6 in ≤6 months,7-24 months of GMG group.The frequencies of G and C allele were 76.2％,23.8％ and 9/12,3/12 in the two groups.The difference in distribution of the genotypes and alleles between two of the three groups was not statistically significant (x2 =1.326,P =0.515;x2 =0.007,P =0.932).The frequencies of three genotypes GG,GC and CC were respectively 2/8,4/8,2/8;11/13,2/13,0/13 and 3/6,3/6,0/6 in limbs,throat,both limbs and throat of GMG group.The frequencies of G and C alleles were 8/16,8/16;92.3％,7.7％ and 9/12,3/12 in the three groups.The difference in distribution of the genotypes and alleles between two of the three groups was statistically significant (x2 =8.813,P =0.028;x2 =9.706,P =0.008).The genotype frequencies in every group were all in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium.Conclusions BclI polymorphism may predict the first generalized symptom of OMG.BclI polymorphisms of GR might have no relationship with the recurrence of MG,generalization and generalized time of OMG during the first two years after MG onset.