Association between interleukin 21 and Graves’ disease

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Graves' disease (GD) is an organ-specific autoimmune thyroid disease; 25-50% of GD patients will develop Graves' ophthalmopathy (GO). The etiology of GD and GO may be multifactorial, but the immune response plays a central role. Many studies have reported that IL-21 has crucial roles in autoimmune diseases. We examined whether IL-21 is associated with the development of GD and GO. The serum concentration of IL-21 was tested in 40 primary GD patients, 42 treated GO patients and 24 healthy controls. Our data show that the serum level of IL-21 is associated with the development of GD. We also made an association study with the IL-21 gene polymorphisms rs4833837, rs907715 and rs13143866 in a comparison of 633 patients and 612 healthy controls from the Chinese population. This case-control association study demonstrated that rs907715 SNP is significantly associated with GD, while the rs13143866 A allele is significantly associated with GO. The haplotypes A-G-G and A-A-A were found ©FUNPEC-RP www.funpecrp.com.br Genetics and Molecular Research 10 (4): 3338-3346 (2011) IL-21 and Graves' disease 3339 at higher and lower frequencies, respectively, in GD patients, suggesting a protective role for A-A-A. However, there were no significant differences in the frequencies of these haplotypes between the GO patients and the control group. We found no association between IL-21 gene polymorphisms and the age of GD onset. We conclude that IL-21 is associated with GD and GO.

Interleukin-21 in Immune and Allergic Diseases

“…giant cell arteritis and Behçet disease) and patients with autoimmune thyroid diseases (i.e. Grave's disease and Hashimoto's thyroiditis) [65][66][67][68][69]. In these conditions, IL-21 could contribute to expand Th1 and TH17 cell responses, since neutralization of IL-21 in cultures of blood T cells reduces the expression of IFN-and IL-17A [65,66,68].…”

Functional Interleukin-21 Polymorphism Is a Protective Factor of Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma

“…For example, the rs907715 and rs2221903 polymorphisms in IL-21 gene can act as candidates for systemic lupus erythematosus in two independent lupus cohorts and in a Chinese population (Ding et al, 2012;Lan et al, 2014). Another case-control study has reported that the rs907715 SNP is significantly associated with Graves' disease ( Jia et al, 2011). Research also has indicated that rs907715 in IL-21 polymorphism may be a potential biomarker for prognosis of breast cancer (You et al, 2013).…”

Association between polymorphisms inIL21gene and risk for sepsis

“…Recently, a number of polymorphisms in IL21 gene have been demonstrated to be associated with risk for different autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, such as multiple autoimmune diseases, Graves' disease and inflammatory bowel disease (Marquez et al, 2009;Maiti et al, 2010;Jia et al, 2011) (Bone et al, 2009). Exclusion criteria were: patients younger than 18 or older than 80 years old or suffering from diabetes, immunological diseases, malignancies, cardiac arrest, emergency surgery; or receiving an immunosuppressive therapy.…”