Link-Polymorphism of 5-HTT Promoter Region Is Associated with Autoantibodies in Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Serotonin transporter linked polymorphic region (5-httlpr) was reported to associate with depression in systemic lupus erythematosus (sle) patients by our team. to explore whether 5-httlpr plays a role in the pathogenesis of sle,we tested 138 sle patients and 138 age and sex matched health controls (hcs) for 5-httlpr by polymerase chain reaction (pcr) and agarose gel electrophoresis. interestingly,the results suggest that the frequencies of ss genotype and s allele in sle patients with positive anti-sm antibody and anti-u1rnp antibody were both significantly higher than the other genotypes and alleles. however,the frequencies of 5-httlpr genotypes and alleles were of no significant difference between sle patients and hcs. this suggested that 5-httlpr was not a high-risk susceptible gene in sle but might relate to sle by affecting production of some autoantibodies,especially anti-sm and anti-u1rnp antibody. � 2016 shu li et al.