Human MTH1, an oxidized purine nucleoside triphosphatase, hydrolyzes 8-oxo-dGTP thereby preventing its misincorporation into DNA. The present study was designed to investigate a possible link between the MTH1 Ile45Thr polymorphism and the development of sporadic Parkinson disease (PD). This case-control study consisted of 106 PD patients and 135 unrelated controls. MTH1 polymorphism was detected by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP). The results showed that Ile45/Thr45 heterozygote and Thr45 allele tended to be more frequent in sporadic PD, although statistically not significant (0.085 vs. 0.044, corrected p = 0.591 and 0.052 vs. 0.022, p = 0.080, respectively). Stratification analysis by gender showed that Ile45/Thr45 heterozygote tended to be more frequent in male PD patients than in male controls (0.113 vs. 0.038, corrected p = 0.480). The male PD patients exhibited a borderline statistically significant higher frequency of the Thr45 allele than the controls (0.073 vs. 0.019, corrected p = 0.050). These results suggested to us that the Thr45 allele of MTH1 might be associated with sporadic PD in the Chinese male population.
(c) 2007 S. Karger AG, Basel