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Objective: To evaluate the relationship between patients’ clinical parameters, especially clinical specifiers, and the intron 4 VNTR variant of the endothelial nitric oxide synthase ( NOS3 ) gene in bipolar disorder (BD) patients. Methods: A sample of 95 patients with BD and 95 healthy volunteers were included in the case-control study. The patients consecutively admitted to the outpatient psychiatry clinic for 6 months and were evaluated with some scales for clinical parameters. In addition, PCR was used to determine the NOS3 intron 4 VNTR variant. Results: The NOS3 genotype and allele frequency distributions of rapid cycling BD patients were significantly different from non-rapid cycling BD patients and the control groups. Furthermore, NOS3 genotype and allele frequency distributions of treatment-resistant BD patients were significantly different from treatment-responsive BD patients and the control groups. While BD patients carrying the b/b genotype and b allele had a lower risk of rapid cycling and treatment resistance, having the b/a genotype in BD patients was at higher risk in terms of rapid cycling and treatment resistance. In addition, the number of hospitalizations and the Clinical Global Impression-Improvement Scale scores of the BD group with the b/b genotype were statistically lower than the BD group with b/a and a/a genotypes. Conclusions: We propose that the intron 4 VNTR variant of the NOS3 gene may be associated with rapid cycling and treatment resistance in Turkish patients diagnosed with BD.

For COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease-2019) cases, detecting host-based factors that predispose to infection is a very important research area. In this study, the aim is to investigate the MBL2 and NOS3 gene polymorphisms in COVID-19 patients with lung involvement, whose first nasopharyngeal PCR results were negative. Seventy-nine patients diagnosed with COVID-19 between April-June 2020 who were admitted to a university hospital, and 100 healthy controls were included. In the first statistical analysis performed between PCR-positive, CT-negative and PCR-negative, CT-positive patients; the AB of MBL2 genotype was significantly higher in the first group (p = 0.049). The B allele was also significantly higher in the same subgroup (p = 0.001). The absence of the AB genotype was found to increase the risk of CT positivity by 6.9 times. The AB genotype of MBL2 was higher in healthy controls (p = 0.006). The absence of the AB genotype was found to increase the risk of CT positivity; also, it can be used for early detection and isolation of patients with typical lung involvement who had enough viral loads, but whose initial PCR results were negative.