LAUSR

OBJECTIVES Gestational diabetes mellitus is a carbohydrate intolerance that occurs during pregnancy. Various inflammatory mediators are considered to be risk factors leading to GDM development. Among them are pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as IL16 and IL18. The aim of this study was to examine the association between IL16 and IL18 polymorphisms and GDM. MATERIAL AND METHODS This study included 204 pregnant women with GDM and 207 pregnant women with normal glucose tolerance (NGT). All samples were genotyped in duplicate using allelic discrimination assays with TaqMan® probes. RESULTS We observed that there was a decreased frequency of IL16 rs4778889 CC genotype carriers among women with GDM (CC vs. CT + TT: OR = 0.14; 95% CI = 0.02-1.15; p = 0.034). However, there was no significant difference in the distri-bution of alleles (C vs. T: OR = 0.81; 95% CI = 0.54-1.21; p = 0.30). There was a decreased frequency of the IL18 rs187238 G allele among GDM women (G vs. C: OR = 0.71; 95% CI = 0.53-0.96; p = 0.027). We also observed a decreased frequency of the IL18 rs1946518 T allele among women with GDM; however, this difference had only borderline statistical significance. We observed an association between IL18 rs187238, rs1946518 and BMI in pregnant women. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study suggest that IL18 rs187238 and rs1946518 polymorphisms may be associated with an increased risk of GDM as well as with BMI in pregnant women.