Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Medicine - Department of Medical Biochemistry

Micro RNAs (MiRNA) are involved in a variety of biological processes, and their misregulation is often associated with human diseases. MicroRNA-146a has a crucial role in regulating the development and function of innate immune cells. Behcet disease (BD) is recognized as a systemic inflammatory disorder characterized by uveitis, recurrent oral, genital ulcers, and skin lesions. In this study we aimed to investigate the association between miRNA 146a expression and polymorphism with BD and their possible association with clinical manifestations and disease activity. A total of 47 patients with BD and 50 normal controls were genotyped for miR-146a/rs2910164 and examined for miR-146a expression in peripheral blood by real-time PCR. The results showed that miRNA expression in patients is higher than control (7.27±4.11), (1.13±0.37) respectively (p value <0.001).In the genotyping study of miR-146a polymorphism, the overall frequencies of CC, CG, and GG allele combinations were 8.5%, 31.9%, and 59.6% in the group of patients and 12.0%, 64.0%, and 24.0% in the control group. When the allele frequencies were compared, it was found that the frequency of C allele is higher in the control group with statistically significant difference (p=0.004). But there is no statically significance difference between patients having the CC, CG or GG genotype and miR-146a expression. There is also a significant association between miRNA expression and clinical manifestation as posterior uveitis, CNS manifestation, eye activity and vascular activity. In conclusion our study identi{uFB01}ed that C allele of miR-146a rs2910164 had protective role of developing BD

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