FC gamma receptor polymorphisms in patients with immune thrombocytopenia

Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is an autoimmune blood disease of unknown etiology. The aim of our study was to investigate a possible role of FCGR2A and FCGR3A polymorphisms in the development of primary ITP.

We analyzed 125 adult patients with ITP and 120 healthy controls. Genotyping was performed by using PCR-RFLP methods.

Our results showed significantly higher frequency of high-affinity FCGR3A-158V allele in patients with ITP compared with control subjects (47.2% versus 37.5%; p = 0.037). We did not find significant differences in the genotype distribution or allele frequencies for FCGR2A-131H/R between patients and controls, p = 0.652 and p = 0.478. In the groups of patients with unresponsive and responsive ITP we found significantly different genotype distribution and allele frequencies for FCGR3A, p = 0.036 and p = 0.008 respectively. There was no significant difference in genotype and allele frequencies for FCGR2A between these two groups of patients. Our results confirmed that the combination of high-affinity FCGR2A-131H and FCGR3A-158V allele was more common in patients with ITP than in controls (55% versus 40%; p = 0.024).

Our results suggest possible role of FCGR3A polymorphism in the etiology, development and clinical outcome of ITP, but larger prospective studies are needed to confirm these results.