Study the association of miRNA-146a gene polymorphism and some immunological markers with the risk of Rheumatoid Arthritis incidence in a sample of Iraqi patients.

Abstract

Rheumatoid arthritis is a multifactorial autoimmune disease affecting 1–2% of the population worldwide. It is more common in women than men, predominately aged 40-60. This study aims to identify the association of the polymorphism in the MIR146A gene with RA susceptibility in a sample of Iraqi patients and to examine whether these polymorphisms can influence the severity and activity of the disease. The case-control study was conducted in the period between December 2021 and February 2022. A total of 120 blood samples were collected, including 60 patients with rheumatic arthritic disease who most regularly visit the chronic arthritis diseases department of Baghdad Teaching Hospital-Medical City in Iraq and 60 healthy controls. Polymorphisms were genotyped by using HRM realtime PCR for genotyping assay. Significant differences in the frequency of miRNA-146a rs2910164 alleles and genotypes were observed between RA patients and controls. The CC genotype of the MIR146A Gene in the (rs2910164 SNP) shows a risk for rheumatoid arthritis (50% versus 23.33% in healthy individuals), the (χ2 =5.81; O.R.= 1 and the P-value = 0.0159) respectively especially in females than males the CC genotype seems the only risk factor among the other genotypes (CG and GG) with (P-value ≤ 0.05) in (31.46%), while the other genotypes (CG and GG) show no risk for rheumatoid arthritis in the studied samples of Iraqi population. Keywords: MIR146a gene, polymorphism, rs2910164, HRM, RA, Iraq.