An association study of NRAMP1, VDR, MBL and their interaction with the susceptibility to tuberculosis in a Chinese population

Objectives: To investigate natural-resistance-associated macrophage protein 1 (NRAMP1), mannosebinding lectin (MBL), vitamin D receptor (VDR) gene polymorphisms and their interaction with susceptibility to pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) in a Chinese population. Methods: A case-control study was conducted in PTB (n=151), age-and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs) (n=453). Genetic polymorphisms of NRAMP1 (INT4, D543NA and 3'UTR), MBL (HL, PQ, XY and AB) and VDR (FokI and Taq) were analyzed by using PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and PCR-single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) techniques. Multifactor dimensionality reduction (MDR) analysis was carried out to assess the effects of the interaction between SNPs. Results: The distribution of NRAMP1-3'UTR (TGTG/del), MBL-HL (H/L) and FokI (F/f) were significantly different between PTB patients and HCs (p<0.05). HPYA (OR: 1.88; 95% CI: 1.22-2.91), LPXA (OR: 3.17; 95% CI: 1.69-5.96), LQYA (OR: 3.52; 95% CI: 1.50-8.23) and LPYB (OR: 12.37; 95% CI: 3.75-40.85) of MBL were risk haplotypes for PTB. The TGTG-H-f (OR: 1.70; 95% CI: 1.10-2.62) and del-H-f (OR: 3.48; 95% CI: 1.45-8.37) of 3'UTR-HL-FokI were also high-risk haplotypes associated with tuberculosis. Conclusions: Our study suggests that genotypes of many polymorphic genes are associated with TB, it is necessary to further explore the mechanism of genotypes and gene-gene interaction in susceptibility to tuberculosis. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of International Society for Infectious Diseases.