highly significantP -values<0.05
Further categorizing the asthma patients on the basis of the phenotypic characteristics of the disease ( Table 3 ), as obtained from their detailed proforma, such as sex (male/female), occurrence (seasonal/throughout), severity (wheeze on exertion/wheeze at rest), family history (positive/nil), rhinitis (positive/nil), allergy to at least 2 provoking factors (positive/nil), smoking status (non-smoker/ever-smoker), longstanding cough (positive/nil), sputum production (positive/nil) and pattern of daily symptoms (morning/night SOB/anytime SOB), highly significant protective association was observed between the MMP-2 -1306C/T gene polymorphism and all of the asthma phenotypic traits (all P -values<0.05).