Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction as a Method of Express Genetic Typing of Patients with Uterine Leiomyoma: An Example of Three Genetic Polymorphisms

Study Objective: To assess the efficacy of methods for DNA gene typing (direct sequencing and two variants of real-time PCR) for routine analysis of large groups; to compare the prevalence of genotypes of three single nucleotide polymorphisms in groups of women with uterine leiomyoma (with a separate analysis of a group with a family history of the disease) and in controls. Study Design: comparative study. Materials and Methods. Subjects were divided into groups using the case-control principle. DNA gene typing results for two groups of patients were analysed. Also, we analysed prevalence of genotypes in study group (patients with uterine leiomyoma) and in controls (patients without a history of uterine leiomyoma and a family history of the disease). The primary method used for genotyping was direct sequencing with genotype imaging. On the second stage, we tested two different PCR-based genotyping methods. Study Results. Patients with uterine leiomyoma were subject to genotyping using three single nucleotide polymorphisms (rs3020434, rs124577644, rs12637801) in ESR1, FBN2, and KCWMB2 introns. We have identified significant differences in prevalence of genotypes between the study group and controls. Polymorphism prevalence is statistically different between patients with leiomyomas, controls and women with a family history of the disease. It is demonstrated that the use of the two variants of real-time PCR testing instead of direct sequencing speeds up results; these methods are a less expensive and less labour-intensive tool for genotyping of single nucleotide polymorphisms in large groups. Conclusion. Real-time PCR testing can be used for express and efficient analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with uterine leiomyoma. Both methods (PCR genotyping with the use of oligonucleotide probes and analysis of high-resolution melting profiles) tested in this paper make it possible to get unambiguous results in 97–99% of samples. Keywords: uterine leiomyoma, single nucleotide polymorphisms, family proneness.