Author(s)

Meraj Pourhossein^1*, Reza Ghavimi¹, Fereshteh Alsahebfosoul², Kamran Ghaedi³

¹Department of Genetics and Molecular Biology, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
²Department of Immunology, Isfahan University of Medical Science, Isfahan, Iran.
³Department of Biology, School of Sciences, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory demyelinating disease of central nervous system (CNS) that mostly affects young adults. The etiology of MS includes both genetic and environmental factors. A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) linked with autoimmune disorders predisposition, identified by Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) among genes which immunologically related are considerably over signified. The goal of the current study is investigation of the association between rs1800795 (-174 G/C) polymorphism in the promoter of IL6 gene variant with the risk of RRMS in a subset of Iranian population. In this case-control study, 110 healthy subjects and 110 patients with RRMS were included. DNA was extracted from blood samples and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to amplify the fragment of interest contain rs1800795 SNP, restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) method was performed for genotyping of the DNA samples with a specific restriction enzyme (NlaIII). SPSS for Windows software (version 18.0; SPSS, Chicago, IL) was used for statistical analysis. No significant differences were found between RRMS patients and healthy controls with respect to the distribution of the cytokine gene polymorphism investigated. Odds ratio adjusted for age, sex, and blood groups (except A blood group) has displayed similar outcomes. These results indicate that the rs1800795 SNP is not a susceptibility gene variant for development of RRMS in the Isfahan population. Further studies using new data on complex transcriptional interactions between IL-6 polymorphic sites are necessary to determine IL-6 haplotype influence on susceptibility to RRMS.

Multiple Sclerosis (RRMS), GWAS, IL6 Gene, Polymorphism

Pourhossein, M. , Ghavimi, R. , Alsahebfosoul, F. and Ghaedi, K. (2014) Association between rs1800795 (-174 G/C) Polymorphism in the Promoter of IL6 Gene and Risk of Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis (RRMS) in Isfahan Population. Open Journal of Genetics, 4, 407-413. doi: 10.4236/ojgen.2014.45038.