Study Of The Expression Of Toll-like Receptor 2, 4mRNA And Polymorphisms Of Patients With Leprosy

[Abstract] Objective To study the expression of Toll-like receptor (TLR) 2,4mRNA and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) of relative sites (TLR2-597T/C, TLR4-896A/G) in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of patients with leprosy. Methods 150 cases of the patients with leprosy were collected from the BiJie district GuiZhou province of China,103 cases of lepromatous type (LL) and 47 cases of tuberculoid type (TT) and in these cases,43 cases of familial aggregation and 107 cases of non-familial aggregations. The expression of TLR2mRNA and TLR4mRNA in PBMC of patients with leprosy were made by Real Time PCR. The genotypes of TLR2 (597T/C) and TLR4 (896A/G) of all samples were analyzed by the polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP). The percentages of different genotypes were compared with between patients and controls and LL group and TT group, familial aggregations and non-familial aggregations. The analysis of variance with SPSS 16.0 andχ2 test were applied in statistical analysis.Results The expression level of TLR2mRNA and TLR4mRNA were 0.56±0.06 and 0.34±0.04 in the leprosy group respectively, and 0.22±0.10 and 0.21±0.07 in the the control group. The expression level of TLR2mRNA and TLR4mRNA was higher than the control group (P<0.01). The expression level of TLR2mRNA and TLR4mRNA were 0.62±0.07 and 0.40±0.05 in the LL group, and 0.43±0.11 and 0.21±0.07 in the TT group, and 0.22±0.10 and 0.21±0.07 in the control group respectively. The expression level of TLR2mRNA in the LL and TT group was higher than the control group (P<0.05).The expression level in the LL and TT group was no significant difference (P>0.05). The expression level of TLR4mRNA in the LL group was higher than the control group (P<0.05). The expression level of TLR4mRNA in the LL group was higher than the TT group (P<0.05). The expression level of TLR4mRNA in the TT group was no significant difference than the control group (P>0.05). The expression level of TLR2mRNA and TLR4mRNA were 0.46±0.12 and 0.27±0.08 in the familial aggregation group and TLR2mRNA 0.60±0.08, TLR4mRNA 0.37±0.05 in the non-familial aggregation group respectively. The expression level of TLR2mRNA and TLR4mRNA was no significant difference in the familial aggregation and the non-familial aggregation group (P>0.05). The expression frequencies of TLR2 (597T/C) genotype of TT, TC, CC were 43.3%,38.7%,18% and 48.0%,42.0%,10.0% in the patient and control group respectively. There was no significant difference in the patient and control group (P>0.05). The expression frequencies of TT, TC, CC were 41.7%,38.8%,19.5% in the LL group and 46.8%, 38.3%,14.9% in the TT group. There was no significant difference between the TT and LL group in the expression frequencies (P>0.05). The polymorphism of TLR4 (896A/G) was not detected in all patients and controls. The genotype was 896AA homozygous wild. Conclusion The high expression level of TLR2mRNA and TLR4mRNA in PBMC in patients with leprosy was increased significantly. It was suggested that TLR2 and TLR4 may be a specific recognition receptor in patients with leprosy and played an important role in the infection of mycobacterium leprae and development of the patients with leprosy. There was not a relative on the polymorphism of TLR2 (597T/C) and TLR4 (896A/G) in the BiJie district GuiZhou province of China.