Common variants of APOE are associated with anti-epileptic drugs resistance in Han Chinese patients

摘要

Purpose/aim of the study: Apolipoprotein E (APOE) has been implicated as one of the susceptibility genes for some subtypes of epilepsy and may be related to anti-epileptic drugs resistance. The purpose of this study was to investigate the possible association between APOE variants and the anti-epileptic drugs resistance in Chinese population. Materials and methods: APOE gene rs429358 and rs7412 variants were genotyped for epsilon 2, epsilon 3, epsilon 4 alleles using amplification refractory mutation system in 480 subjects including 207 anti-epileptic drugs-resistant patients and 273 drug-responsive patients. Results: We found that the frequency of APOE gene rs429358 C allele in the drug resistant patients is higher than that in the drug-responsive patients (14.98% vs. 10.1%, OR = 1.25[1.02 - 1.52], p = 0.017). Moreover, according to the two variants, we analyzed the distributions of -epsilon 4 and +epsilon 4 alleles of APOE gene and found that there were higher frequencies of +epsilon 4 allele in drug-resistant epileptic patients than that in drug-responsive patients (31.8% vs. 13.2%, OR = 1.15[1.05 - 1.25], p = 0.002). Conclusions: Our study demonstrated that APOE rs429358 variant C allele and e4 allele were associated with the anti-epileptic drugs resistance in Han Chinese patients.