Expression of immunomodulatory genes in inflammatory and autoimmune diseases

Immune response in inflammation has a wide complexity, involving APC-lymphocyte and lymphocyte-lymphocyte communication. Fine modulation of the immune response is delivered by the interaction between co-stimulatory molecules, on which the final outcome of the immune response depends. Evaluation of the expression profile of certain co-stimulatory genes and cytokines in inflammation may clear some of this complexity. Hence a PCR method is proposed in order to asses mRNA presence and quantity in some pathologies. We proposed to establish standard "yes or no" condition to the PCR in order to confer a semi-quantitative attribute to our PCR. We constructed primers for the following genes: GITR, GITRL, IL-2, CD25, CD28, CTLA-4, TGF-β1 and IL-18. The GAPDH gene was used as internal control. Samples were collected from patients with tonsillitis, rheumatoid polyarthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus and voluntary subjects as controls, isolating lymphocytes from blood and tissue, and extracted the total mRNA, followed by reverse transcription to cDNA. We confirmed quality and quantity of the total mRNA using GAPDH. Afterwards we performed PCR of the above mentioned genes. The obtained results demonstrate that there are significant differences in the expression of these genes in response to inflammation.

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