Higher Risk of Multiple Sclerosis Based on Il-4 Gene Variations Amongst Some Cohorts of Iranian Patients

Background and aim: multiple sclerosis (ms) is a complex inflammatory disease of the central nervous system and characterized by chronic inflammation and axonal, oligodendrocytes injury. il-4, a b cell growth factor, plays a key role in the progress of inflammation and t cell differentiation into th2. single nucleotide polymorphisms (snps) can alter il-4 expression. the present study aims to evaluate the possible genetic association of functional il-4 polymorphic with ms disease in the west of iranmethods: in this case-control study, 150 ms patients and 120 healthy people were studied. dna of all samples was extracted from peripheral blood. snps of c-33t (rs2070874) and c-598t (rs2243250) in the il-4 gene were genotyped using the pcr–rflp assessment method. allele and genotype frequencies of snps were determined, and the p-value was calculatedresults: chi-square analysis suggest a significant association of rs2070879 polymorphism of il-4 gene with ms (p = 0.001, or= 1.79) and correlation between rs2243250 in il-4 gene and ms (p = 0.03, or= 1.66). the average t alleles associated with rs2070879 variation was 15.5% for patients and5.6% for controls (p=0.004). regarding the rs2243250 polymorphism, average detected t alleles were 18% for ms patients and 12% for controls (p=0.05). no association was found between neither polymorphism nor edss and ageconclusion: our results indicate that il-4 polymorphisms rs2070874 and rs2243250 appear to be involved in susceptibility to multiple sclerosis; hence, they can potentially be useful for determining the possible mechanism of the disease or helping preventative measures.