Significant association between IL-17F promoter region polymorphism and susceptibility to asthma in a Korean population.

BACKGROUND

Individual differences in susceptibility to asthma would be expected because of common DNA variants of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across populations. The pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-17F has homology with the IL-17 motif and induces the expression of other inflammatory cytokines in airway epithelial cells. This study aimed to identify IL-17F gene polymorphisms and to determine a possible association between these polymorphisms and susceptibility to asthma through a case-control study in a Korean population.

METHODS

We identified SNPs in the IL-17F gene by sequencing. Genotyping was conducted using the high-resolution melting (HRM) method on 424 asthma patients and 548 healthy controls.

RESULTS

The genotype and allele frequencies of rs1889570 SNP were significantly different between asthma patients and healthy controls (p = 0.001 and 0.002, respectively). The rs1889570 SNP genotype was also positively associated with the number of peripheral blood eosinophils in asthma patients (p = 0.03). The frequencies of haplotypes AA (p = 0.01), GG (p = 0.01) and AG (p = 0.006) were significantly different between asthma patients and healthy controls.

CONCLUSIONS

In this study, we confirmed that the rs1889570 polymorphism of the IL-17F gene is associated with susceptibility to asthma in a Korean population.