Background: Cytokine gene single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are widely used to study susceptibility to complex diseases and as a tool for anthropological studies.
Materials and methods: To investigate cytokine SNPs in an Iranian multi-ethnic population, we have investigated 10 interleukin (IL) SNPs (IL-1β (C-511T, T-31C), IL-2 (G-384T), IL-4 (C-590T), IL-6 (G-174C), IL-8 (T-251A), IL-10 (G-1082A, C-819T, C-592A) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) (G-308A) in 415 Iranian subjects comprising of 6 different ethnicities. Allelic and genotypic frequencies as well as Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) were calculated by PyPop software. Population genetic indices including observed heterozygosity (Ho), expected heterozygosity (He), fixation index (FIS), the effective number of alleles (N e) and polymorphism information content (PIC) were derived using Popgene 32 software. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) was constructed using Reynold's genetic distance obtained from the frequencies of cytokine gene polymorphism.
Results: Genotypic distributions were consistent with the HWE assumptions, except for 3 loci (IL-4-590, IL-8-251 and IL-10-819) in Fars and 4 loci (IL-4-590, IL-6-174, IL-10-1082 and TNF-α-308) in Turks. Pairwise assessment of allelic frequencies, detected differences at the IL-4-590 locus in Gilakis versus Kurds (P = 0.028) and Lurs (P = 0.022). Mazanis and Gilakis displayed the highest (Ho= 0.50 ± 0.24) and lowest (Ho= 0.34 ± 0.16) mean observed heterozygosity, respectively.
Conclusions: MDS analysis of our study population, in comparison with others, revealed that Iranian ethnicities except Kurds and Mazanis were tightly located within a single cluster with closest genetic affinity to Europeans.
Keywords: Allelic frequency; Arlequin; genetic diversity; polymorphism information content; single nucleotide polymorphisms.