The study population consisted of 71 patients and 70 age and gender-matched healthy subjects. Each of the participants had 2cc of blood withdrawn, which was placed into a whole blood tube, and the DNA was obtained using the NucleoSpin® Blood DNA Isolation kit. To display the band lengths, the products were amplified using the primary pairs of the interleukins investigated and developed in a 2% agarose gel.
There were no significant differences between the groups with respect to the IL-1Ra, IL-1β, IL-2, IL-6 and the IL-10 gene polymorphism distributions. In the patient group the IL-1RN2 gene polymorphism was detected to be statistically correlated with the presence of articular involvement (p = 0.0283) and the IL-1β gene polymorphism was statistically correlated with the presence of an ocular lesion (p = 0.0178). The evaluation of the IL-2 gene polymorphism (p = 0.0065) and IL-10 gene polymorphism (p = 0.0483) distributions with respect to age of BD onset revealed a statistically significant distribution.
The statistical correlations between the articular involvement and IL-1RN, the ocular involvement and the IL-1β, and the age of disease onset and the IL-2 and IL-10 gene polymorphisms, detected for the first time in the literature, suggest that these polymorphisms could be statistically associated with the disease symptoms and used as prognostic factors.