Association of Mannose Binding Lectin Polymorphism with Hepatitis C Infection in Northwest of Iran

Background and aims: persistent infection with hepatitis c virus leads to liver cirrhosis and often to liver cancer.mannose binding lectin is a c-type serum lectin, which plays an important role in innate immunity by activating theclassical complement pathway. variants of the mannose binding lectin have been shown to be associated with lowserum concentrations of the protein and to predispose the subjects to bacterial, fungal and viral infections. this studywas undertaken to investigate the association between hepatitis c virus infection and polymorphisms of mannosebinding lectin gene.methods: we assessed the single nucleotide polymorphism of mannose binding lectin in exon 1, at codon 52, codon 54and codon 57 in 100 patients infected with hepatitis c virus and 100 controls in iranian population. mannose bindinglectin gene mutations were determined by means of polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment lengthpolymorphism analyses.results: the occurrence of the codon 54 mutation was significantly higher in patients (or 3.53, ci 95%: 1.94-6.44,p<0.005). no significant difference in the frequency of codon 52 and 57 mutations was observed between patient andcontrol groups.conclusions: mannose binding lectin may be one of the factors that influence the course of hcv infection. our resultssuggest that heterozygous carriage of the variant allele of codon 54 of mannose binding lectin is associated withhepatitis c virus infection in our cases. this may not be true about codons 52 and 57 mutations.