ABSTRACT
Autoimmunity has been implicated in the etiopathogenesis of vitiligo.
We sought to determine whether polymorphisms in the major histocompatibility complex class I-related chain A (MICA) and macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) genes may have a role in the pathogenesis of vitiligo.
We conducted a study including 100 patients with vitiligo and age- and sex-matched 172 control subjects to examine the role of single-nucleotide polymorphisms of MICA gene rs1051792 and MIF genes rs755622 and rs2096525 as risk factors for vitiligo. Real-time PCR combined with the melting curve analysis using fluorescence-labeled hybridization probes was used for genotyping analyses. Mann–Whitney, Kruskal–Wallis, and chi-square (χ2) tests as well as multivariate logistic regression adjusted for age and gender were used for statistical evaluation. Linkage disequilibrium (LD) and haplotype frequencies were also performed.
No significant association was observed between the variant alleles of studied genes and vitiligo. Haplotype analysis demonstrated that there was a strong LD between rs755622 and rs2096525 loci of MIF gene (D′ = 0.92, r2 = 0.827). However, haplotype frequencies in patients were similar to those in controls.
These preliminary results suggest that the polymorphic variants of MIF rs755622, MIF rs2096525, and MICA rs1051792 genes do not play a critical role in the etiopathogenesis of vitiligo.
