Gene Polymorphisms as Risk Factors
In transplanted hearts (also called ̒cardiac allograftsʼ) blood vessels may clog after transplantation. This is called vasculopathy and leads to rejection of the graft. Consequently, for long-time survival of transplanted hearts a strict control of the organ function is mandatory.
Patients may have genetic predispositions for upcoming rejection. My work interrogated several genes in this respect.
I checked them in a German-wide unique patient cohort. For angiotensin-converting enzyme, an increased risk for a certain genotype could be shown, whereas this was not the case for tumor necrosis factor, 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase and TGF-β1.