Background & objective: Nitric oxide (NO) synthesized by endothelial cells is known to be a potent vasodilator. It has been suggested that the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) (G894T) may affect the response of vascular endothelium to increased oxidative stress. The Glu298Asp (GT) polymorphism located in exon 7, may be associated with several diseases. The objective of the present study was to determine the presence of genotype frequencies of Glu298-->Asp (G894T) single nucleotide polymorphism in the eNOS gene among south Indian male Tamil speaking population.
Methods: Polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragmant analysis was done to detect the presence of Glu298-->Asp (G894T) variant of the eNOS gene in 105 healthy male volunteers.
Results: The frequency of the eNOS GG, GT, and TT genotypes was found to be 74.3, 25.7, and 0 per cent respectively. The 'T' allele frequency among this population was found to be 0.13. Chi square analysis showed that the study population lies in accordance with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium.
Interpretation & conclusion: The occurrence of the homozygous mutant (TT) was completely absent among the study population. Moreover, our result indicated that the presence of the homozygous mutant genotype for eNOS polymorphism was absent/less common among south Indian male Tamil population of Asian race.