Short aggrecan gene repetitive alleles associated with lumbar degenerative disc disease in Turkish patients.

We investigated a possible association between aggrecan gene polymorphism and lumbar degenerative disc disease in Turkish patients. One hundred 20-30-year-old patients with or without low back pain were selected for the study. Lumbar magnetic resonance imaging was performed on all patients. The patient group had low back pain clinically and degenerative disc disease radiographically. The control group included patients with and without low back pain: all were negative radiographically for degenerative disc disease. Genomic DNA was extracted from all participants. A PCR assay were used to evaluate variable number of tandem repeat polymorphism of aggrecan