Objective: Cholesterol gallstone disease (CGD) is a multifactorial and multistep disease. Apart from female gender and increasing age being the documented non-modifiable risk factor for gallstones the pathobiological mechanisms underlying the phenotypic expression of CGD appear to be rather complex, and one or more variations in genes could play critical roles in the diverse pathways further progressing to cholesterol crystal formation. In the present study we performed genotyping score, Multifactor dimensionality reduction (MDR) and Classification and Regression Tree analysis (CART) to identify combinations of alleles among the hormonal, hepatocanalicular transporter and adipogenesis differentiation pathway genes in modifying the risk for CGD.
Design: The present case-control study recruited total of 450 subjects, including 230 CGD patients and 220 controls. We analyzed common ESR1, ESR2, PGR, ADRB3, ADRA2A, ABCG8, SLCO1B1, PPARγ2, and SREBP2 gene polymorphisms to find out combinations of genetic variants contributing to CGD risk, using multi-analytical approaches (G-score, MDR, and CART).
Results: Single locus analysis by logistic regression showed association of ESR1 IVS1-397C>T (rs2234693), IVS1-351A>G (rs9340799) PGR ins/del (rs1042838) ADRB3-190 T>C (rs4994) ABCG8 D19H (rs11887534), SLCO1B1 Exon4 C>A (rs11045819) and SREBP2 1784G>C (rs2228314) with CGD risk. However, the MDR and CART analysis revealed ESR1 IVS1-397C>T (rs2234693) ADRB3-190 T>C (rs4994) and ABCG8 D19H (rs11887534) polymorphisms as the best polymorphic signature for discriminating between cases and controls. The overall odds ratio for the applied multi-analytical approaches ranged from 4.33 to 10.05 showing an incremental risk for cholesterol crystal formation. In conclusion, our muti-analytical approach suggests that, ESR1, ADRB3, in addition to ABCG8 genetic variants confer significant risk for cholesterol gallstone disease.