Distribution of cytokine gene polymorphisms in the general Lebanese population: the first report.

Abstract

CONTEXT: Cytokines are polypeptide regulatory molecules that play a significant role in inflammatory and regulatory responses of the immune system. Several cytokine gene polymorphisms have been studied to date and have been found to be associated with distorted cytokine production or activity by affecting transcriptional regulation and with vulnerability to a variety of infectious and autoimmune diseases as well as to transplant rejection. RESULTS: We studied 106 healthy Lebanese individuals using polymerase chain reaction-sequence-specific priming technique to detect 22 single-nucleotide polymorphisms within 13 cytokine genes: IL1alpha 889-T-C, IL1beta 511-T-C, IL1beta +3962-T-C, IL1R pst1 1970-T-C, IL1RA mspa1 11100-T-C, IL4Ralpha 1902-G-A, IL12 1188-C-A, IFNgamma 874-A-T, TGFbeta codon 10-C-T, TGF-beta codon 25-G-C, TNFalpha 308-A-G, TNFalpha 238-A-G, IL2 166-G-T, IL2 330-T-G, IL4 1098-T-G, IL4 590-T-C, IL4 33-T-C, IL6 174-C-G, IL6 nt565-G-A, IL10 1082-G-A, IL10 819-C-T, and IL10 592-A-C. We compared our results to those reported in other populations with similarities observed between the Lebanese and the Italian populations. CONCLUSION: The study of different cytokine polymorphisms will aid in understanding the susceptibility of populations to various diseases, and this is the first report from the Lebanese community.