A genetic study of the association of six polymorphisms with rheumatoid arthritis in the Egyptian population

Background Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the tissues of the joints by mistake. Different factors—either genetic or environmental—affect the development of the RA disease in patients. A lot of studies aimed to examine the genetic associations with this disease in different populations. This research aspires to perform a genetic association study between six single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and RA disease in the Egyptian population with 49 controls and 52 patients. The SNPs that are included in this study are MIR146A rs2910164 (C:G), MIR499/MIR499A rs3746444 (T:C), MTMR3 rs12537(C:T), MIR155HG rs767649 (A:T), IRAK1 rs3027898 (A:C) and PADI4 rs1748033 (C:T). Methods Real-time PCR with TaqMan allelic discrimination assay were both used to perform the genotyping. The Odds ratio models with 95% confidence interval were used to test the associations. The used models are multiplicative, recessive, dominant and co-dominant. Result The demonstrated results indicated that rs2910164 and rs12537 were associated with RA, while rs3746444 showed no association in all the tested models. The remaining SNPs were excluded as they didn't pass the Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium test. Conclusion The MIR146A and MTMR3 polymorphisms showed susceptibility to RA. Moreover, MIR499/MIR499A had no role in the disease. Key points MIR146A (C allele) had a protective role in rheumatoid arthritis association. MTMR3 was associated with rheumatoid arthritis using the dominant, Co-dominant heterozygote and recessive models. MIR499/MIR499A had no association with rheumatoid arthritis.