Artigo Acesso aberto Produção Nacional Revisado por pares

The IFN-³+874T/A gene polymorphism is associated with retinochoroiditis toxoplasmosis susceptibility

2009; Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Ministério da Saúde; Volume: 104; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1590/s0074-02762009000300009

ISSN

1678-8060

Autores

Maíra Cavalcanti de Albuquerque, Ana Luisa Quintella do Couto Aleixo, Eliezer Israel Benchimol, Ana C. Leandro, Leandro Batista das Neves, Regiane Trigueiro Vicente, Maria da Glória Bonecini-Almeida, Maria Regina Reis Amendoeira,

Tópico(s)

Cytomegalovirus and herpesvirus research

Resumo

Toxoplasmosis is a worldwide zoonosis that generally produces an asymptomatic infection. In some cases, however, toxoplasmosis infection can lead to ocular damage. The immune system has a crucial role in both the course of the infection and in the evolution of toxoplasmosis disease. In particular, IFN-³ plays an important role in resistance to toxoplasmosis. Polymorphisms in genes encoding cytokines have been shown to have an association with susceptibility to parasitic diseases. The aim of this work was to analyse the occurrence of polymorphisms in the gene encoding IFN-³ (+874T/A) among Toxoplasma gondii seropositive individuals, including those with ocular lesions caused by the parasite, from a rural population of Santa Rita de Cássia, Barra Mansa, state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Further, we verified which of these polymorphisms could be related to susceptibility to the development of ocular toxoplasmosis. This study included 34 individuals with ocular toxoplasmosis (ocular group) and 134 without ocular lesions (control group). The differences between A and T allele distributions were not statistically significant between the two groups. However, we observed that a higher frequency of individuals from the ocular group possessed the A/A genotype, when compared with the control group, suggesting that homozygocity for the A allele could enhance susceptibility to ocular toxoplasmosis in T. gondii infection.

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