Impacts of different cytokine and chemokine polymorphisms in Pakistani asthmatics a case control study

Background: Asthma is a chronic disease of the airways. Its symptoms are caused by inflammation and constriction of the bronchial muscles. During asthma there are changes in immunological pathways in which various cytokines and chemokines are involved directly or indirectly. The present study was conducted to explore the involvement of 15 Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 10 candidate cytokine and chemokine genes with asthma in Pakistani population. Methods: We conducted this study in 333 asthmatic cases and 220 healthy controls.Genotyping was performed using the Sequenom Mass ARRAY iPLEX platform (10 SNPs) and TaqMan assay (5 SNPs). Results: The minor allele at two SNPs have shown evidence of association with risk for asthma, rs1800896 in the interleukin 10 (IL10) (OR 1.38, 95% CI 1.01–1.88, P= 0.04) and rs1800925 in the interleukin 13 (IL13) (OR 1.45, 95% CI 1.04–2.02, P= 0.03). Conclusion: Variations at the IL10 and IL13 genes are found to be associated with asthma susceptibility in the Pakistani population.