By : Sabah Farouk, Wael Abdel-Mageed, Mahmoud Aly

Abstract

The main adverse consequences of excess bodyweight are cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes, and several cancers. IL-1Ra serum concentration has been reported earlier to increase in human obesity and it is therefore assumed that the polymorphism of IL-1Ra may influence cytokine production. The study was designed to investigate whether the IL-1Ra polymorphism was associated with obesity. A total number of 66 individuals; 20 normal (BMI <25 Kg/m2), 20 overweight (BMI 25-29.9 Kg/m2) and 26 obese (BMI More than 30.0 Kg/m2) were enrolled in this study. Genotyping was performed using a polymerase chain reaction PCR amplification of the intron-2 fragment harboring a variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) nucleotide sequences 86 bp of tandem repeat. The PCR products were separated on 2% agarose gel. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software (version 11.5). The genotype and allelic frequencies showed a significantly difference between normal vs. overweight and normal vs. obese (p-values: 0.001; 0.0001; 0.0018 and 0.001 respectively). Although, The presence of Allelic frequencies for Allele I between normal vs. overweight and normal vs. obese showed > 2 folds risk in overweight and >3 folds in obese (OR=2.3; 95% CI=0.796-8.620 & OR=2.1; 95% CI=0.972-10.265 respectively). Allele II between normal vs. overweight and normal vs. obese showed > 3.5 folds risk in overweight and >1.5 folds in obese (OR=3.45; 95% CI=0.836-9.210 & OR=1.63; 95% CI=0.892-9.11 respectively) and Allele V between normal vs. overweight and normal vs. obese showed > 2 folds risk in overweight and >1.5 folds in obese (OR=1.99; 95% CI=0.821-9.10 & OR=1.95; 95% CI=0.882-8.975 respectively).This may suggest that IL-1Ra appears to be induced by inflammatory stimuli as well as obesity-associated factors. This is relatively a pilot study; but nevertheless, may assist in identifying the pathophysiological cause for obesity

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8. Interleukin-1 receptor antagonist gene polymorphism and obesity a pilot study from Egypt.

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