Abstract:

Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) plays an important role in the pathophysiology of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). In this study, we aimed to investigate the role of TNF-α G308A promoter gene polymorphisms and TNF-α level in patients with IBD and their associations with clinical features of the patients. This study included 91 patients with inflammatory bowel disease (46 patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) and 45 patients with Crohn’s disease (CD)) and 129 healthy controls (HC). Polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism techniques were both used to explain the frequency of TNF-α polymorphisms and the relationship about clinical outcomes of patients with IBD. There was no statistically significant difference about genotype frequencies and serum TNF-α level between the three groups (UC, CD, HC) (all p>0.05). TNF-α G308A genes polymorphisms were compared in terms of disease localization, behaviour, activity, the use of anti TNF-α treatment and operative status in patients with CD and UC. Similarly, there was no statistically significant difference about genotype frequencies in terms of all these parameters in patients with CD (p> 0.05). However, In patient with UC, the frequency of A allele and AG genotype was significantly increased in moderate and severe UC cases (p= 0.004). These findings suggest that TNF-α G308A gene polymorphism may be helpful in predicting the behavior of the disease in patients with ulcerative colitis but further studies are needed

Keywords: