Possible association of IL-4 VNTR polymorphism with susceptibility to preeclampsia.

Preeclampsia (PE) is a pregnancy-specific disorder that results in maternal mortality and morbidity. Growing evidence indicated that cytokines are involved in the pathogenesis of PE and interleukin-4 VNTR polymorphism could be implicated in altering the PE risk. The aim of this study was to evaluate the possible association between IL-4 VNTR polymorphism and susceptibility to PE in Iranian population for the first time. Genetic polymorphism was evaluated in 192 PE and 186 healthy control women by polymerase chain reaction method. We found that the VNTR polymorphism of IL-4 gene has significantly increased the risk of preeclampsia (RP2/RP1 versus RP1/RP1, OR, 2.8 [95% CI, 1.7 to 8.8]; P = 0.0001 and RP2/RP2 versus RP1/RP1; P = 0.002). The results showed that carriage of IL-4 VNTR RP2 allele has positive association with preeclampsia susceptibility.