TGF-Beta1-915G/C and TNF-alpha-308G/A polymorphisms in children with asthma

TGF-Beta1 is a pro and antiinflammatory cytokine and plays an important role in airway remodelling in asthma. TNF-alpha is a proinflammatory cytokine that involved in the pathogenesis of asthma. Cytokine production is under genetic control, and certain single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which lead to allelic variants of cytokine genes are associated with higher or lower cytokine production in vitro. In some studies TGF-Beta1-915G/C and TNF-alpha-308G/A polymorphisms are found to be more prevalent and associated with asthma. The aim of this study is to investigate the frequency of TGF-Beta1-915G/C and TNF-alpha-308G/A polymorphisms and to determine whether or not these polymorphisms are associated with the development of asthma in children. 46 asthmatic children and 67 healthy controls were investigated by LightCycler PCR analysis for TGF-Beta1-915G/C and TNF-alpha-308G/A polymorphisms. The frequency of TGF-Beta1-915G/C and TNF-alpha-308G/A polymorphisms in asthmatic children were 15.2% and 23.9% respectively while the corresponding figures were 8.9% and 23.8% in the control group (p> 0.05). The risk of asthma development was not associated for TGF-Beta1 915G/C (OR: 0.54, 95% CI: 0.17-1.75) and TNF-alpha-308G/A (OR: 0.99, 95% CI: 0.41-2.40) polymorphisms. These results indicated that, the frequency of TGF-Beta1 915G/C and TNF-alpha-308G/A polymorphisms did not show any difference in asthmatic children compared to healthy controls and these polymorphisms do not seem to influence suspectibilty to asthma.