| Introduction: The aim of this study was to evaluate the methylation status of TNF-a and SOCS3 promoters in patients with BD and compare them with a healthy group.
Method: This was a case–control study, in which 47 subjects with BD and 61 individuals as the control
participated. Blood samples were collected from all the participants. Then, PBMCs were isolated using
the Ficoll method and methylation of considered sites was investigated using the qMS-PCR technique
after DNA extraction by the rapid genomic DNA extraction method and its analysis with Nano-drop.
Results: The methylation and expression of TNF-a showed that the methylation level significantly
declined in the patient in comparison with the healthy (p < 0.05). Moreover, the results on the mean
expression showed that it significantly increased in the patient group, as compared with the healthy
group (p < 0.05). In addition, the expression of the SOCS3 gene was not significantly different between
the patients and healthy subjects while the level of SOCS3 methylation was significantly higher in the
patient group than that in the healthy group (p < 0.05).
Discussion: The present study revealed that the gene expression of TNF-alpha increased in BD
patients, suggesting that TNF-alpha likely has a role in the pathogenesis of BD. |