Papers of the Week

Chronic pain is reportedly associated with the transient receptor potential canonical 3 () gene. The present study examined the genetic associations between the single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the gene and chronic pain. The genomic samples from 194 patients underwent linkage disequilibrium (LD) analyses of 29 SNPs within and around the vicinity of the gene. We examined the associations between the SNPs and the susceptibility to chronic pain by comparing the genotype distribution of 194 patients with 282 control subjects. All SNP genotype data were extracted from our previous whole-genome genotyping results. Twenty-nine SNPs were extracted, and a total of four LD blocks with 15 tag SNPs were observed within and around the gene. We further analyzed the associations between these tag SNPs and chronic pain. The rs11726196 SNP genotype distribution of patients was significantly different from the control subjects even after multiple-testing correction with the number of SNPs. The TT + TG genotype of rs11726196 is often carried by chronic pain patients, suggesting a causal role for the T allele. These results contribute to our understanding of the genetic risk factors for chronic pain.