Investigation of polymorphisms in anti-inflammatory cytokine genes in hematogenous osteomyelitis

Osteomyelitis is a progressive bone infection disease caused by destructive immunological inflammatory reactions following new bone formation. Anti-inflammatory cytokines are a series of immunoregulatory molecules that control the pro-inflammatory cytokine response. In this study, we investigated 9 single nucleotide polymorphisms in 5 different cytokine/cytokine receptor genes in hematogenous osteomyelitis (HO) patients, and compared their outcomes with normal healthy individuals. Sequence-specific forward and reverse primers and two TaqMan® MGB probes with dyes (VIC™ and FAM™) that specifically detect Allele 1 and Allele 2 of each SNP were utilized. The genotypes CC (P = 0.009) and CT (P = 0.041) of SNP rs2070874, and alleles A (P = 0.044) and G of SNP rs1800871 were significantly different between the patients and healthy controls. The expression of the CC genotype or C allele at rs2070874 was a risk factor for HO development, with higher frequencies of CT and T being found in the control samples. The expression of the A allele of rs1800871 was also significantly higher in patients than in controls, and was therefore considered a risk factor.