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Article

Association of an HLA-G 14-bp Insertion/Deletion polymorphism with high HBV replication in chronic hepatitis

LAARIBI Ahmed Baligh, ZIDI Inès, HANNACHI N, BEN YAHIA Hamza, CHAOUCH H, BORTOLOTTI Daria, ZIDI Nour, LETAIEF A, YACOUB S, BOUDABOUS Abdellatif, RIZZO Roberta, BOUKADIDA J, 2015

Journal of Viral Hepatits, 22, 10, 835-841, Octobre 2015

Résumé

Identification of an HLA-G 14-bp Insertion/Deletion (Ins/Del) polymorphism at the 30 untranslated region of HLA-G revealed its importance in HLA-G Mrna stability and HLA-G protein level variation. We evaluated the association between the HLA-G 14-bp Ins/Del polymorphism in patients with chronic Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in a case–control study. Genomic DNA was extracted from 263 patients with chronic HBV hepatitis and 246 control subjects and was examined for the HLA-G 14-bp Ins/Del polymorphism by PCR. The polymorphic variants were genotyped in chronic HBV seropositive cases stratified according to HBV DNA levels, fibrosis stages and in a control population. There was no statistical significant association between the 14-bp Ins/Del polymorphism and increased susceptibility to HBV infection neither for alleles (P = 0.09) nor for genotypes (P = 0.18). The stratification of HBV patients based on HBV DNA levels revealed an association between the 14-bp Ins/Del polymorphism and an enhanced HBV activity with high HBV DNA levels. In particular, the Ins allele was significantly associated with high HBV DNA levels (P = 0.0024, OR = 1.71, 95% CI 1.2–2.4). The genotype Ins/Ins was associated with a 2.5-fold (95% CI, 1.29–4.88) increased risk of susceptibility to high HBV replication compared with the Del/Del and Ins/Del genotypes. This susceptibility is linked to the presence of two Ins alleles. No association was observed between the 14-bp Ins/Del polymorphism and fibrosis stage of HBV infection. We observed an association between the 14-bp Ins/Del polymorphism and high HBV replication characterized by high HBV DNA levels in chronic HBV patients. These results suggest a potential prognostic value for disease outcome evaluation.