Micronucleus Analysis in Behçet’s Disease With and Without HLA-B51
2 Erzurum Nenehatun Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, Department of Medical Genetics, Erzurum, Turkey DOI : 10.4274/tftr.46873
Objective: Genetic factors are considered to play important roles in the development of Behçet’s disease (BD). Micronuleus (MN) assay is a sensitive indicator of caused genomic damage. Our aim was to investigate whether human leucocyte antigen (HLA)-B51-positive patients had higher MN frequency than those without HLA-B51.
Materials and Methods: This study was conducted between May 2009 and January 2010 in Erzurum Training and Research Hospital. We analyzed MN frequency in lymphocytes of 40 patients with BD and 30 healthy controls. For HLA-B51 typing, DNA was extracted from ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid blood samples and HLA-B5 allele genotyping was performed by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-sequence specific primer method.
Results: Twenty-two of 40 patients with BD (55%) and 9 of 30 controls (30%) were HLA-B51-positive. The MN frequency was significantly increased in BD patients compared with controls (3.12±0.81 vs 1.64±0.51, p<0.0001). The MN frequencies in HLA-B51-positive patients were higher than in HLA-B51-negative ones (p<0.001) with BD, whereas no difference was detected in the control group (p>0.05).
Conclusion: This study revealed that there was a significant association between elevated MN frequency and existence of HLA-B51 in patients with BD.
Keywords : Behçet’s disease, HLA-B51, micronucleus