Influence of Selected Polymorphisms of the Renin-Angiotensin System on the Regulation of Blood Pressure during Pregnancy

Hypertension during pregnancy is a heterogeneous group of disorders with elevated blood pressure with or without proteinuria. The blood pressure regulation is a complex issue, and research on this issue have been present in the world literature for many years. The study was designed to evaluate the impact of the ACE I/D, AGT-235, AGT-174 polymorphisms on the regulation of blood pressure. It is a case-control study. The study included 104 women with uncomplicated pregnancies in the control group and 75 pregnant women with hypertension disorders in the study group, hospitalized in the Perinatology and Obstetrics Department of the University Hospital in Cracow. Genomic DNA was extracted from peripheral blood leukocytes and polymorphisms were genotyped from all the patients. We analyzed the genotypes distribution and its association to blood pressure values, the time of hypertension occurrence, the medications needed to control it and the time postpartum till the blood pressure normalization in all the groups. A p-value <0.05 was considered as significant. Clinical evaluation included many standard anthropometric measures like weight and height for the calculation of the BMI in the beginning of the pregnancy and blood pressure values. It may be concluded that there is no influence of studied polymorphisms not only on the regulation of blood pressure during pregnancy, but also on the time of the onset or pharmacological treatment of hypertension during pregnancy and the time after delivery needed to normalization of blood pressure values. Further studies on larger groups are needed.