Lack of Association between Promoter Gene Polymorphism (-318 C/T) and Multiple Sclerosis in Iranian Population.

Multiple sclerosis (ms), a chronic inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system is believed to have a t cell-mediated autoimmune etiology. the cytotoxic t lymphocyte antigen 4 (ctla-4) gene is a strong candidate for the involvement in autoimmune diseases. to examine the genetic association of the ctla-4 gene locus with ms, in a case-control design, we analyzed (-318 c/t) single nucleotide polymorphism of the ctla-4 gene in 135 unrelated iranian relapsing-remitting ms patients and 135 age, gender and ethnicity-matched healthy subjects using pcr-rflp method. the frequency of ctla-4 gene (-318) polymorphism among cases and controls was 52.1% vs.47.9% for cc, 39.2% vs. 60.8% for tc and 75.0% vs. 25% for tt genotypes respectively. the distribution of ctla-4 (-318 c/t) genotype and allele frequencies did not significantly differ between ms patients and healthy subjects. in conclusion, there may not be any association between ctla-4 gene (-318 t/c) polymorphism and ms development.