A preliminary examination of the effects of genetic variants of redox enzymes on susceptibility to oedematous malnutrition and on percentage cytotoxicity in response to oxidative stress in vitro.

AbstractBackground: The causes of oedematous vs non‐oedematous childhood malnutrition (OM vs NOM) remain elusive. It is possible that inherited differences in handling oxidant stressors are a contributing factor.Aims: To test for associations between polymorphisms in five genes and (i) risk of OM, a case‐control study, and (ii) percentage cytotoxicity in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) exposed to hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), an in vitro cell challenge study.Methods: Participants had been admitted previously for treatment of OM (cases, n = 74) or NOM (controls, n = 50), or were an independent set of healthy pregnant women (n = 47) who donated peripheral blood mononuclear cells. We tested for associations between genetic variation and outcome using single markers or a bivariate score constructed by counting numbers of deleterious alleles for each of 15 possible pairs of markers.Results: In the case‐control study there were no significant single‐marker associations with OM. We did find that higher bi...