Association Of Killer Cell Immunoglobulm-like Receptors Gene Polymorphisms With Susceptibility To Chronic Hepatitis C Virus Infection

[Objective] To investigate whether the inheritance of KIR gene polymorphisms could serve as a candidate for the susceptibility to persistent HCV infection.[Methods] All 54 persistent HCV-infected cases and 324 randomly healthy controls enrolled to detect the KIR genotype for fifteen KIR genes using polymerase chainreaction with specific sequence primers (PCR-SSP) analysis.[Results] In this study, we typed 15 KIR genes in 54 Chinese cases and 324 healthycontrols. All of the KIR genes tested were present in both patients and controls. Generally, three framework genes (2DL4, 3DL2 and 3DL3) and 2DL3, KIRZ were detected in almost all the CHC cases and controls. But in CHC, KIR2DLI and KIR3DLI were all detected, although they were absent in some controls (an approximately 0.93% loss for KIR2DLI and 1.23% loss for KIR3DLI, which were not significant at the 5% level). In the respective comparison of phenotypic frequencies (presence or absence) of KIR genes between CHC patients and healthy control subjects revealed significantly different frequencies of KIR 2DL5 and 2DS3 (KIR2DL5,40of54(74.07%)in cases vsl73of324(53.4%)in controls, p=0.005; KIR2DS3,18of 54 (33.33%)in cases vs 63 of 324 (19.44%)in controls, p=0.030). Furthermore,individuals positive for activating KIR2DS2,and KIR3DS1 were more frequently patients then control subject respectively,these differences did not reach statistical significan,possibly because of the small sample size.No significant differences were detecable between patients and control subjects for activating KIR2DS4,KIR2DS1,KIR2DS5and inhibitory KIR2DL2.[ Conclusions ] The genetic variation at the KIR locusthe influences the susceptibility to persistent HCV infection in a Chinese population.The function of these two genes KIR2DS3, KIR2DL5 should be investigated deeply.