Associations of IL-6 polymorphisms with Behçet’s Disease in Denizli, province of Turkey

Abstract

Behçet's Disease is a chronic, multisystemic disease and the etiopathogenesis of the disease develop as a result of the interaction of environmental and genetic factors. IL-6 is a proinflammatory cytokine with functions on immune response regulation and chronic inflammation demonstrated by increased serum levels and gene expression studies in Behçet’s disease. We genotyped IL-6; rs1800797, rs1800796 and rs1800795 polymorphisms in 78 patients with Behçet’s disease and 130 healthy controls using PCR-RFLP based approach. No statistically significant difference in allele or genotype frequencies of IL-6, rs1800797 and rs1800796 was found in between groups. We determined that in the BD patients with genital ulcers, arthritis and without vascular involvement was found to have significantly different IL-6, SNP frequencies com- pared with healthy controls. In addition, the IL-6 rs1800795 GC genotype and C allele may contribute to the development of the disease in female BD. The haplotype distributions of all loci of IL-6 were examined and GGG was found as the highest frequency haplotype in both groups. In conclusion, the results of our study showed that IL-6 rs1800795 may associate with the susceptibility to the BD. Studies should be conducted with more SNPs in large and different populations need to evaluate the contribution of responsible alleles for the disease and its clinical features.