Tumor necrosis factor gene polymorphisms in advanced non-exudative age-related macular degeneration

Purpose: to investigate tumor necrosis factor (tnf)-α gene polymorphisms in advanced dry-type age-related macular degeneration (amd) in a population from northeastern iran. methods: in this case-control study,50 patients with geographic macular atrophy and 73 gender-matched controls were enrolled. genomic deoxyribonucleic acid (dna) was extracted from the peripheral blood. polymerase chain reaction was performed to analyze 2 candidate single nucleotide polymorphisms in the tnf-α gene,namely -1031 thymine (t)/cytosine (c) and -308 guanine (g)/adenine (a). results: the distribution of the - 1031 t/c genotype was tt,62%; tc,36%; cc,2% in the patients and tt,60%; tc,36%; cc,4% in the controls (p = 0.94). genotype analysis of tnf-α -308 also revealed no significant difference in distribution between patients (g,78%; ga,22%; aa,0%) and controls (gg,74%; ga,23%; aa,3%) (p = 0.51). none of the haplotypes nor alleles of studied tnf-α polymorphisms were significantly associated with advanced dry-type amd. conclusion: the findings of this study show that polymorphisms in the tnf-α gene,do not play an important role in dry-type amd in the studied population. © 2015 journal of ophthalmic and vision research.