An Angiotensin I Converting Enzyme Polymorphism Is Associated with Clinical Phenotype When Using Differentiation-Syndrome to Categorize Korean Bronchial Asthma Patients

In this study, genetic analysis was conducted to investigate the association of angiotensin I converting enzyme (ACE) gene polymorphism with clinical phenotype based on differentiation-syndrome of bronchial asthma patients. Differentiation-syndrome is a traditional Korean medicine (TKM) theory in which patients are classified into a Deficiency Syndrome Group (DSG) and an Excess Syndrome Group (ESG) according to their symptomatic classification. For this study, 110 participants were evaluated by pulmonary function test. Among them, 39 patients were excluded because they refused genotyping. Of the remaining patients, 52 with DSG of asthma (DSGA) and 29 with ESG of asthma (ESGA), as determined by the differentiation-syndrome techniques were assessed by genetic analysis. ACE insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism analysis was conducted using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Student's t, chi-square, Fisher and Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium tests were used to compare groups. No significant differences in pulmonary function were observed between DSGA and ESGA. The genotypic frequency of ACE I/D polymorphism was found to differ slightly between DSGA and ESGA (P = .0495). However, there were no significant differences in allelic frequency observed between DSGA and ESGA (P = .7006, OR = 1.1223). Interestingly, the allelic (P = .0043, OR = 3.4545) and genotypic (P = .0126) frequencies of the ACE I/D polymorphism in female patients differed significantly between DSGA and ESGA. Taken together, the results presented here indicate that the symptomatic classification of DSGA and ESGA by differentiation-syndrome in Korean asthma patients could be useful in evaluation of the pathogenesis of bronchial asthma.