Association of interleukin 4 VNTR polymorphism and HIV/AIDS in a north Indian seropositive patients

Despite different efforts made to intervene with the deadly nature of HIV/AIDS, all attempts remained unsuccessful due to complexity of the viral host interactions. The solution to HIV-1 pandemic is still to come, thus to assist the efforts being made to intervene with the deadly nature of the virus, different factors responsible for the disease burdens have to be looked into a systematic manner. As a result, the present study aimed to find out the association of IL-4 VNTR polymorphism with HIV-1 susceptibility and rate of disease progression. Three hundred cases and an equal number of sex and age matched controls were included for this study. The polymerase chain reaction assay was utilized to genotype IL-4 VNTR. The results of this study showed statistically significant variation among cases and controls in the distribution of the Rp2/Rp2 genotype (OR = 0.36, 95% CI = 0.18-0.69; P value = 0.0014) indicating, thereby, a possibility of reduced risk of HIV-1 susceptibility. Thus, Rp2/Rp2 genotype of the IL-4 might have a role to play in reducing risk of HIV-1 susceptibility among a north Indian population.