ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Only a minority of individuals infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis develop clinical tuberculosis. Genetic epidemiological evidence suggests that pulmonary tuberculosis has a strong human genetic component. Previous genetic findings in Mendelian predisposition to more severe mycobacterial infections, including by M. tuberculosis, underlined the importance of the interleukin 12 (IL-12)/interferon γ (IFN-γ) circuit in antimycobacterial immunity. METHODS: We conducted an association study in Morocco between pulmonary tuberculosis and a panel of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) covering 14 core IL-12/IFN-γ circuit genes. The analyses were performed in a discovery family-based sample followed by replication in a case-control population. RESULTS: Out of 228 SNPs tested in the family-based sample, 6 STAT4 SNPs were associated with pulmonary tuberculosis (P = .0013-.01). We replicated the same direction of association for 1 cluster of 3 SNPs encompassing the promoter region of STAT4. In the combined sample, the association was stronger among younger subjects (pulmonary tuberculosis onset <25 years) with an odds ratio of developing pulmonary tuberculosis at rs897200 for GG vs AG/AA subjects of 1.47 (1.06-2.04). Previous functional experiments showed that the G allele of rs897200 was associated with lower STAT4 expression. CONCLUSIONS: Our present findings in a Moroccan population support an association of pulmonary tuberculosis with STAT4 promoter-region polymorphisms that may impact STAT4 expression.
Subject(s)
Genetic Predisposition to Disease/genetics , Interferon-gamma/genetics , Interleukin-12/genetics , STAT4 Transcription Factor/genetics , Tuberculosis, Pulmonary/genetics , Adolescent , Adult , Aged , Alleles , Case-Control Studies , Child , Child, Preschool , Female , Genotype , Humans , Infant , Interferon-gamma/immunology , Interleukin-12/immunology , Male , Middle Aged , Morocco , Mycobacterium tuberculosis/genetics , Mycobacterium tuberculosis/immunology , Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide , Risk , STAT4 Transcription Factor/immunology , Tuberculosis, Pulmonary/immunology , Young AdultABSTRACT
Only a small fraction of individuals infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis develop clinical tuberculosis (TB) in their lifetime. Genetic epidemiological evidence suggests a genetic determinism of pulmonary TB (PTB), but the molecular basis of genetic predisposition to PTB remains largely unknown. We used a positional-cloning approach to carry out ultrafine linkage-disequilibrium mapping of a previously identified susceptibility locus in chromosomal region 8q12-13 by genotyping 3,216 SNPs in a family-based Moroccan sample including 286 offspring with PTB. We observed 44 PTB-associated SNPs (p < 0.01), which were genotyped in an independent set of 317 cases and 650 controls from Morocco. A single signal, consisting of two correlated SNPs close to TOX, rs1568952 and rs2726600 (combined p = 1.1 × 10(-5) and 9.2 × 10(-5), respectively), was replicated. Stronger evidence of association was found in individuals who developed PTB before the age of 25 years (combined p for rs1568952 = 4.4 × 10(-8); odds ratio of PTB for AA versus AG/GG = 3.09 [1.99-4.78]). The association with rs2726600 (p = 0.04) was subsequently replicated in PTB-affected subjects under 25 years in a study of 243 nuclear families from Madagascar. Stronger evidence of replication in Madagascar was obtained for additional SNPs in strong linkage disequilibrium with the two initial SNPs (p = 0.003 for rs2726597), further confirming the signal. We thus identified around rs1568952 and rs2726600 a cluster of SNPs strongly associated with early-onset PTB in Morocco and Madagascar. SNP rs2726600 is located in a transcription-factor binding site in the 3' region of TOX, and further functional explorations will focus on CD4 T lymphocytes.
