Polymorphisms in uncoupling protein genes UCP2 and UCP3 are not associated with HIV‐associated sensory neuropathy in African individuals

Abstract

Dear Editor,Human immunodeficiency virus-associated sen-sory neuropathy (HIV-SN), due to viral and/or drug-related toxicity, is the most common neurologicalcomplication of HIV (Sacktor, 2002) and causes sig-nificant suffering and reduced quality of life (Ellis et al.,2010). The neuropathy shares several features withdiabetic neuropathy, for example, both HIV-SN anddiabetic neuropathy are small-fibre, length-dependentneuropathies that are associated with mitochondrialdysfunction and intracellular calcium dysregulation(Verkhratsky and Fernyhough, 2008; Hoke et al., 2009;Lehmann et al., 2011).Recently, minor alleles in the genes encodingmitochondrial uncoupling proteins UCP2(rs659366*A,-866G