Interferon gamma gene +874A/T polymorphism and intracellular interferon gamma expression in pulmonary tuberculosis.

Anand, S.P.; Harishankar, M.; Selvaraj, P.

Cytokine; 2010; 49; 130–133.

Abstract: We investigated whether IFN- χ gene +874(A/T) polymorphism influences intracellular interferon gamma expression in T-cell subsets of normal healthy subjects (NHS) and pulmonary tuberculosis patients (PTB). Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were stimulated with live Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) and the intracellular IFN- χ expression was studied using flow cytometry. Genotyping of IFN- χ gene +874(A/T) was done using allele specific polymerase chain reaction. Significantly increased IFN- c expressing CD3+CD4+ and CD3+CD8+ T cells were observed in NHS with AA genotype compared to TT genotype in unstimulated ( p = 0.0308 and p = 0.0157) and MTB stimulated ( p = 0.0494 and p = 0.0287) cultures and this difference was not observed in PTB patients. The present study suggests that the variant genotypes of IFN- χ (+874) may be associated with altered expression of IFN- χ at the intracellular level and play an immunoregulatory role at the site of M. tuberculosis infection.

Keywords : IFN- χ , Polymorphism, Intracellular IFN- χ , Tuberculosis

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