Association Study between Mucin 4 (MUC4) Polymorphisms and Idiopathic Recurrent Pregnancy Loss in a Korean Population

Recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) is the loss of two or more consecutive pregnancies before 20 weeks of gestational age. Our study investigated whether mucin 4 (MUC4) polymorphisms are associated with RPL. MUC polymorphisms (rs882605 C>A, rs1104760 A>G, rs2688513 A>G, rs2258447 C>T, and rs2291652 A>G) were genotyped in 374 women with RPL and 239 controls of Korean ethnicity using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis and the TaqMan probe SNP genotyping assay. Differences in genotype frequencies between cases of RPL and the controls were compared. MUC4 rs882605 C>A and rs1104760 A>G polymorphisms were associated with increased incidence of RPL in three and four or more pregnancy loss patients. The haplotype analyses showed a tendency for the allelic effect including the association of MUC4 rs882605 A and rs1104760 G alleles with increased incidence of RPL. In addition, the MUC4 rs882605 CA/MUC4 rs2258447 CC genotype combination was associated with increased RPL prevalence. The two exonic polymorphisms lead to amino acid changes of protein and may act as pathogenic variants for RPL. In conclusion, the MUC4 rs882605 C>A and MUC4 rs1104760 A>G polymorphisms were associated with the susceptibility of RPL and we considered them as potential biomarkers for RPL.