Melanie Dunn 9/20/2011
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic disease that leads to inflammation of the joints and surrounding tissues that can also affect other organs.
Genes may contribute 50-60% of the etiology of RA. 31 RA risk loci have been found. At TRAF1/C5 locus, both TRAF1 and C5 are possible RA-causing genes due to biological functions.
Complement activation leading to significant depletion of complement components has been shown in synovial fluid of patients with RA.
rs is located in the TRAF1 intron 3 and rs is located upstream of TRAF1 and downstream of C5. These variants at these loci may affect the expression levels of TRAF1 and C5 to lead to RA.
576 patients with RA and 689 normal age- matched controls The concentrations of anti-CCP antibodies and RF were obtained from sera. SNP genotyping was performed and the Hardy-Weinberg equation for the SNP was tested with the X squared test.
From the 576 RA patients, 363 were anti-CCP positive and 496 were RF positive. Both rs and rs were significantly associated with RA.
Only 5 loci/genes have been successfully replicated in different ethnicities for RA. rs at the TRAF1/C5 locus has been significantly associated with RA in studies all over the world.
It was demonstrated that genetic variants rs and rs in TRAF1/C5 locus are significantly associated with RA in the Han Chinese, suggesting that TRAF1/C5 may play a role in the development of RA in this population, which expands the pathogenesis role of TRAF1/C5 in a different ethnicity.
Zhu, Jing, et. al: Single nucleotide polymorphisms at the TRAF1/C5 locus are associated with rheumatoid arthritis in a Han Chinese population. BMC Medical Genetics 2011, 12:53.