Investigation for the physiological and pathological significance of the interaction between COMT deficiency and homocysteine

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Life style related diseases such as diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and cancer, would be caused by the interaction between genetic factor, life style, and environmental factors. When considering the recent epidemic of such life style related diseases, suggesting that most of people are indeed sharing genetic background and therefore such background is probably acquired for the evolutional process of homo sapience. Applicant of this grant established first genetic mouse model of preeclampsia and revealed catechol metabolism defects in catechol-o-methyltransferase (COMT) deficiency in mice was one possible explanation of preeclampsia pathogenesis. Preeclampsia and metabolic defects in life style related diseases share symptoms, such as glucose intolerance, hypertension, and abnormal adiposity. In our current study using mouse models, we confirmed COMT is fragile and easy to be suppressed in the exposure of environmental factors, such as high fat diet fed and pregnancy.