Association study between vitamin d receptor gene polymorphisms and patients with Parkinson disease in Chinese Han population.

Vitamin D and vitamin D receptor (VDR) have been postulated as environmental and genetic factors in neurodegenerative disorders including multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer disease, and recently Parkinson disease (PD). The purpose of this study is to explore the potential correlation between single nucleotide polymorphisms of the VDR gene (VDR) rs4334089 and rs731236 and PD. A total of 483 patients with PD and 498 age- and sex-matched controls were involved in this study. Genotypes were determined by using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism and DNA sequencing. There were no significant differences in the genotype and allele frequencies of VDR rs4334089 and rs731236 polymorphisms between the group of patients with PD and the control group in a Chinese Han population (for VDR rs4334089: OR 1.02, 95% CI: 0.85-1.23; for VDR rs731236: OR 1.13, 95% CI: 0.75-1.71). Similarly, there were still no differences when stratifying by age or by gender. These findings suggest that VDR gene is not a susceptibility gene for PD in our population.