Cytokine gene polymorphisms and early pregnancy loss

Abstract

Background: A disbalance of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines can negatively affect early stages of human embryogenesis. The association between polymorphism of cytokine genes (-31С-Т IL1B, -174G-C IL6, -308G-A TNFα and -592С-A, -819C-T IL10) and a pregnancy loss was studied. Materials and method: Study was performed on DNA samples from two groups of women with pregnancy loss: those with a missed abortion (MA) (n = 62) and those with a spontaneous abortion (SA) (n = 62). The control group included 114 women with normal pregnancy. Cytokine genotyping was performed using PCR with sequence-specific primers, with the “SNP-express” kit (Lytech, Russian Federation). Results: Increase in the frequency of heterozygotes for -31С-Т polymorphism of the IL1β gene among women with MA (58.1) if compared with those with SA (36.7%) was found. In the SA group the frequency of heterozygotes for -592С-Т of the IL10 gene was higher (56.7%) than in the control group) (32.5%). The frequency of the -819Т allele of IL10 gene among women with SA was higher than in the control group (0.33 vs 0.23). The -308A allele of the TNFα gene featured the lowest frequency in the SA group if compared with those in the MA and the control group). Conclusion: Our data show that the risk of spontaneous abortion increases if -592A and -819T IL-10, and -308G TNFα genes` alleles are present in the genotype.