Resumen

LARA O, Karlena C; MENDIBLE, Juan C; RAMIREZ, Carlos D  y  HUNG, Alida. Polimorfismos en el Promotor del Gen del Angiotensinógeno (AGT) y su relación con la miocardiopatía chagásica crónica en pacientes venezolanos. INHRR [online]. 2004, vol.35, n.2, pp.14-19. ISSN 0798-0477.

Chagas´disease constitutes an important problem of public health in Latin America for its high prevalence indexes and for the severity of its clinical manifestations, such as the cardiomyopathy, in which the patients can present different grades of heart alteration, being the Chagas’ patients type 3 those that present greater heart compromise. On the other hand, it is known that diverse polymorphisms in the gene of the angiotensinogen (AGT), are correlated with the development of certain hypertrophic cardiomyopathies. In this work, we studied the correlation between the polymorphism -6A/G in the promoter of the gene AGT, with the susceptibility to the development a hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in Chagas patients’ type 3. For this, a sample of 22 Chagasic patients type 3 was studied (confirmed by evaluations and clinical parameters) and 19 seronegative controls to Trypanosoma cruzi without any type of heart alterations. The derivative genotypes of the polymorphism -6A/G were determined by the technique of MS-PCR (Mutagenically Separated PCR), using two allele-specific initiators (primers) for the promoter of the gene AGT. Our results indicate that the distribution of the genotypes GG, AA and AG of the polymorphism -6A/G do not differ significantly among patients and controls (1, 3, 18 and 1, 2, 16; respectively) with a value of ÷2 obtained of 0, 0983 (p < 0,005), that which suggests that the polymorphism -6A/G in the promoter of the gene AGT is not correlated with the development of cardiomyopathy in these patients.

Palabras clave : Chagasic Cardiomyopathy; Trypanosoma cruzi; Angiotensinogen; AGT; Promoter; -6 A/G; Polymorphisms.