Prevalence of pain-related single nucleotide polymorphisms in patients of African origin with sickle cell disease

Background: Prospective pain genetics research is hindered by a lack of data on the prevalence of polymorphisms in pain-relevant genes for patients with sickle cell disease (SCD). For African-Americans in general, limited information is available in public databases. Methods: We prioritized and examined the genotype and allele frequencies of 115 SNPs from 49 candidate pain genes in 199 adult African-Americans and pediatric patients of African origin with SCD. Analyses were performed and compared with available data from public databases. Results: Genotype and allele frequencies of a number of SNPs were found to be different between our cohort and those from the databases and between adult and pediatric subjects. Conclusion: As pain therapy is inadequate in a significant percentage of patients with SCD, candidate pain genetic studies may aid in designing precision pain medicine. We provide prevalence data as a reference for prospective genetic studies in this population.