Investigating the Distributions of Three Common Variants of Tlr9 and Its Mrna Expression Levels in Nafl Patients Without and With Liver Fibrosis Compared To Healthy Controls

Background and aim: recent studies stablished that, the plasma level of mitochondrial dna, increases in nash patients and animal models. other studies have shown that, mitochondrial dna can activate tlr9 downstream signaling, in hepatocytes and triggers inflammatory and fibrotic pathways. based on these findings, present study was developed to investigate the association of mrna expression levels of tlr9 gene and three common genetic polymorphisms of this gene in nafl patients with different stages of hepatic fibrosis compared to healthy controls.methods: twenty-two healthy controls and 70 nafl patients with liver fibrosis were enrolled. based on the fibroscan scores, patients divided into three groups: f0-f1, f2-f3 and f4. genotype frequency distribution of rs352140, rs5743836 and rs187084 were determined using rflp-pcr. the mrna levels of tlr9 also measured using real-time pcr.results: our results showed that, none of the studied genetic polymorphisms had a significant association with the risk of hepatic fibrosis development in nafl patients (p=0.05). while the mrna expression levels of tlr9 was significantly higher in both patients with f0-f1 and f2-f3 fibrosis degree compared to healthy controls (p=0.032 and p=0.007 respectively).conclusion: overall, this study, for the first time, showed that overexpression of tlr9 mrna, independent to its genetic polymorphism, may increases the susceptibility of hepatic fibrosis development in nafl patients.