Open Access

ARTICLE

TNF-alpha single nucleotide polymorphisms in atopic dermatitis

Nasrin Behniafard¹, Mohammad Gharagozlou¹, Elham Farhadi^2,3, Mojdeh Khaledi⁴, Soheila Sotoudeh¹, Behzad Darabi¹, Seid Mohammad Fathi¹, Zahra Gholizadeh Moghaddam¹, Mahdi Mahmoudi⁵, Asghar Aghamohammadi^1,6, Ali Akbar Amirzargar², Nima Rezaei^1,2,6

1 Pediatrics Center of Excellence, Children’s Medical Center
2 Molecular Immunology Research Center; and Department of Immunology, School of Medicine
3 Hematology Department, School of Allied Medical Science
4 Growth and Development Research Center
5 Rheumatology Research Center
6 Research Center for Immunodeficiencies, Children’s Medical Center Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

European Cytokine Network 2012, 23(4), 163-165. https://doi.org/10.1684/ecn.2012.0323

Accepted 05 September 2012;

Abstract

Tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) could be considered as potential biomarkers in atopic dermatitis (AD), while its level could be influenced by cytokine single gene polymorphisms (SNP). This study was performed in 89 pediatric patients with AD and 137 controls to assess polymorphisms of the TNF-α gene at positions -308 and -238, using the polymerase chain reaction and the sequence-specific primers method. The highest positive allelic association that made the patients susceptible to AD was seen for TNF-α -238/G (p<0.001) and TNF-α -308/G (p = 0.003). The GG genotypes at TNF-α -238 and TNF-α -308, were both significantly higher in the patients with AD, compared to the controls (p<0.01). The GG haplotype at TNF-α (-308,-238) was seen in 92.7% of the patients, which was significantly higher than the controls (p<0.001), while a negative haplotypic association with AD was seen for TNF-α (-308, -238) AG and GA (p<0.01). This study showed that the AG genotype of TNF-α -308, associated with a high production of cytokines, was significantly decreased in patients with AD, while the low-producing GG genotype, which could lead to low production of TNF-α, was over-expressed in the atopic patients.

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Keywords

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