Association between GATA-4 mutations and congenital cardiac septal defects in Han Chinese patients / 中华心血管病杂志

ABSTRACT

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To elucidate the association between GATA-4 gene mutations and congenital cardiac septal defects in Han Chinese patients.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Fifty Han Chinese patients with congenital cardiac septal defects and 100 normal subjects with the same ethnical background were studied. Total six exons and the intron-exon boundaries of GATA-4 were amplified by the polymerase chain reaction. The polymerase chain reaction products were purified and directly sequenced with automatic sequencer.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>Two novel heterozygous mutations were discovered in the GATA-4 gene of patients with congenital cardiac septal defects, His28Tyr in exon 2 and His436Tyr in exon 7 respectively, which were absent in the control population and not reported in the SNP database (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/SNP).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Our finding suggests that the mutations in the transcription factor GATA-4 may be related to congenital cardiac septal defects in Han Chinese patients.</p>