In the modern world, people often lack time for active live-style and healthy and quality nutrition, which we see as increase in the incidence of type 2 diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease. The number of cases of type 2 diabetes has tripled over the last three decades, and predictions do not indicate a decrease in the number of diabetics. It is expected that developing countries will face the biggest consequences in the upcoming years, with the 40 % more cases of type 2 diabetes than developed countries. One of the possible complications of this disease is proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR), which occurs in 15 % of patients and can lead to blindness if treated incorrectly. Previous studies suggest that expected known risk factors such as blood sugar, hypertension and hypercholesterolaemia cannot be responsible for all the cases of PDR, requesting that changes in genes play a significant role in development of PDR. In our study, we focused on SNP in the promotor of the gene for erythropoietin (EPO). We compared two Slovenian populations, case group containing of 235 type 2 diabetes patients with PDR, and control group with 664 type 2 diabetics without PDR. With molecular-genetic analysis we checked whether the rs1617640 polymorphism in promotor of the EPO gene is a possible PDR marker in patients with type 2 diabetes. The results of the distribution of genotypes and alleles showed that the investigated polymorphism was not associated with PDR. Distribution of genotypes between groups was near significance (p = 0.0564), therefore it would be necessary to perform the analysis on the larger group of participants.
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