Abbas Hajifathali, Arezou Sayad, Aida Sayad, Azadeh Sayad, Zohreh Arjang, Yasaman Mohseni, Golamreza Babamohammadi, Shohre Zare, Ali Sarzaeem, Akbar Akbari9, Nooshin Asgari
" Multiple Sclerosis is a chronic neuro-immune disorder of the central CNS. MS belongs to the large group of multifactorial and multi-genic disease. The TNFα gene encodes pro-inflammatory cytokine that takes an ambiguous part in the development of various disorders especially autoimmune disease such as MS. In this study we investigated the association of -308A/G TNFα polymorphism and multiple sclerosis in Iranian patients. One hundred MS patients and one hundred ethnically, age and sex matched healthy control individuals were selected. A (-308) TNFα polymorphism was analyzed based on the polymerase chain reaction with sequence-specific primers (developed during the 13IHWC and supplied by Heidelberg University (Heidelberg, Germany)). The frequency of the G allele and G/G genotype at the -308 TNFα position was significantly higher in MS patients in comparison to control subjects (OR: 1.685, 95%CI: 1.046–2.715, P: 0.041; OR: 1.933, 95% CI: 1.095–3.411, P: 0.032, respectively). It indicated that G allele and G/G genotype had susceptibility effect on MS among Iranian patients. But more studies with large sample size and specially investigation of different TNFα alleles in relation to other genes and haplotypes are needed to explain exact effect of TNFα polymorphisms in the MS."