Maria Kalliopi Konstantinidou
Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust, UK
Title: TLR-4, CD14 polymorphisms and plasma concentration of Soluble CD14; is there a genetic link with Coronary Artery Disease?
Biography
Biography: Maria Kalliopi Konstantinidou
Abstract
Background: Inflammatory mechanisms have a key role in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. The most frequent functional polymorphisms of TLR-4- Asp299Gly and Thr399Ile- and of CD14 promoter area - C260T polymorphism- are studied in patients with coronary atheromatosis. Plasma levels of soluble CD14 are checked for possible correlation with the severity of Coronary Artery Disease (CAD).
Methods: DNA was obtained from 100 human paraffin-embedded aortic specimens, from cadavers with known coronary atheromatosis (Group A) and 100 blood samples from patients with CAD, as detected by cardiac Multi-Detector-row-Computed-Tomography (MDCT) (Group B). Our control group consisted of 100 healthy individuals (Group C). Genotyping was performed by Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RFLP-PCR). Plasma levels of sCD14 were measured with ELISA.
Results: For TLR-4 Asp299Gly and Thr399Ile polymorphisms, no statistically significant differences were observed. Regarding the C260T polymorphism, frequencies of T allele were significantly higher in the control group compared to the case group (p = 0.05). The Odds Ratio (OR) showed statistically significant association of TT genotype with healthy individuals (OR= 0.25, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) = 0.10–0.62, p = 0.0017). Plasma levels of sCD14 in patients with CAD (mean value = 1.35 μg/ml) were reduced when compared to reference value.
Conclusions: The studied polymorphisms of TLR-4 showed no association with CAD. Conversely, the studied functional polymorphism of CD14 has a statistically significant difference in expression between healthy and affected by CAD individuals. Further studies could prove the use of sCD14 as possible biomarker for severe coronary disease.