Study of polymorphisms in the CYP2E1 gene in patients with alcoholic pancreatitis.

Cytochrome P450IIEI (CYP2E1) is an ethanol-inducible enzyme. Recently, several novel polymorphisms in the CYP2E1 gene have been identified. A polymorphism at position -35 [G(-35)T] appears to be of functional significance in transcription assays. The aim of this study was to investigate if this and other polymorphisms, at position -1019 [C(-1019)T], 4808 [G(4808)A], and 7668 [T(7668)A] of the CYP2E1 gene are associated with alcoholic pancreatitis. DNA was extracted from peripheral blood of 38 patients with alcoholic chronic pancreatitis (CP), 19 patients with alcoholic acute pancreatitis (AP), 46 alcoholic controls (AC), and 155 normal controls (NC). The polymorphisms were examined by digestion with the corresponding restriction endonucleases following PCR amplification. The results have shown that the frequencies of the rare alleles of these polymorphisms were not significantly different between the CP, AP, and AC groups and NC. Therefore, our study results suggest to us that the polymorphisms investigated in the CYP2E1 gene are unlikely to be involved in the susceptibility and pathogenesis of alcoholic pancreatitis.