Association between interleukin-10 gene polymorphism and development of IgA nephropathy in a Chinese population

We carried out a study to investigate the association between three promoter SNPs (-592G/A, -819T/C and -1082A/C) of Interleukin-10 (IL-10) and development of IgA nephropathy. A hospital-based case-control design was taken in this study. The present study consisted of 184 patients with IgA nephropathy and 237 healthy controls. Polymerase chain reaction restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) assay was applied to assess IL-10 -592G/A, -819T/C and -1082A/C gene polymorphisms. By Chi-square test, we observed a significant difference in terms of genotype distributions of IL-10 -1082A/C between patients with IgA nephropathy and control subjects (χ2=12.81, P=0.002). Using unconditional logistic regression analysis, the CC genotype of IL-10 -1082A/C was found to have 3.69 folds risk of IgA nephropathy when compared with the AA genotype (adjusted OR=3.69, 95% CI=1.62-8.81) (P<0.001). Also, we found that the C allele of IL-10 -1082A/C was associated with an increased risk of IgA nephropathy risk when compared with the A allele, and the adjusted OR (95%) were 1.65 (1.21-2.25) (P=0.001). In our study, we firstly reported a significant relationship between IL-10 -1082A/C genetic variation and IgA nephropathy in a Chinese population.