Influence of visfatin’s gene variations on late diabetic complications

Visfatin (nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase) is an adipokine that performs many functions in the organism. It can be expressed in different tissues such as the brain, kidneys and visceral adipose tissue. Visfatin takes part in many molecular processes including apoptosis, inflammation, cell proliferation. It affects glucose metabolism and is involved in the pathogenesis of diabetes, insulin resistance, atherosclerosis and obesity. Moreover, studies suggest that visfatin also may be associated with the development of diabetic nephropathy and retinopathy. The goal of the study is the assessment of the influence of different visfatin’s gene variants on the occurrence of late diabetic complications. The study group consisted of 272 patients with diabetes – 139 men and 133 women from Southern Poland. Selected DNA fragments were amplificated and marked. Visfatin’s gene in rs4730153 was examined. The Real-Time PCR was conducted with fluorescence-labelled probes. The most common genotypes were heterozygote AG- 138 patients (51%) and homozygote GG- 89 patients (33%). In the study group, there were 92 diabetics with retinopathy, 26 with nephropathy, 88 with neuropathy and 103 with macroangiopathy. It has been assessed using the c2 test that there are no differences between the variability of different variants of visfatin’s gene in the distribution of genotypes. According to Hardy-Weinberg’s test, the variety of population is maintained.