Influence of LGALS3 and PNPLA3 genes in non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) in patients undergone bariatric surgery

This study evaluated the genesPNPLA3 and LGALS3 in patients who have undergone bariatric surgery. Individuals with NAFLD and NASH were evaluated, the DNA was extracted from total blood for genotyping of rs4644, rs4652 from LGALS3 and rs738409 from PNPLA3 genes, the total RNA was obtained from liver biopsy. For the detection of the molecular targets, real-time PCR through Taqman probes was used. From a total of 46 collected patients, of those 21 (456%) were included as NASH and 25 (544%) as steatosis group. This groups showed significant difference to aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and Glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT) (p = 0.0108, p = 0.0090 and p = 0.0044). Regarding to gene expression in studied groups, hepatic steatosis vs NASH, we observed a higher expression of the LGALS3 gene in NASH (p = 0.0273). In addition, patients with C allele in homozygous for rs4644 and rs4652 of LGALS3 gene had higher expression, in NASH group (p = 0.0500 and p = 0.0242, respectively), furthermore for rs4644 both alleles in homozygous showed higher expression (AA/CC vs AC) (p = 0.0500), when analyzed PNPLA3 rs738409, NASH patients with G allele in homozygous had higher expression (p = 0.0494). Therefore, an increased expression of the LGALS3 gene in patients with NASH may be important in the etiopathogenesis of the disease, as well as the presence of rs4652 and rs4644 SNPs in the regulation of transcriptional levels of the gene in patients with NAFLD and NASH.