Association of 1082G/A estrogen receptor genes polymorphisms with recurrent abortions using AS-PCR

Abortion is spontaneous termination of pregnancy before the 20th week. Recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL), also referred to as recurrent miscarriage or habitual abortion, is historically defined as 3 consecutive pregnancy losses. There are several known risk factors associated with recurrent miscarriages, including genetic, endocrine, autoimmune, anatomical. Causes of recurrent miscarriages in 50% of the cases remain unexplained. It has been hypothesized that genetic polymorphism in estrogen receptor genes would be associated with recurrent miscarriages.Material and Materials: This study included 80 patients with a history of three or more consecutive unexplained abortions and 80 women with at least 2 live births without any miscarriage. Then we investigated estrogen receptor gene polymorphism in the participants by allele specific polymerase chain reaction (AS-PCR) method. The frequencies of rs1256149 polymorphisms among the women with recurrent abortions and also the women in the control group were 80% and 62.5 % respectively. There was a significant difference in the genotype frequencies between RPL and the control groups (p=0.028). These findings indicated that estrogen receptor polymorphism can be regarded as a genetic marker for recurrent spontaneous abortions.