Association study of CCR6 gene single nucleotide polymorphism with susceptibility to rheumatoid arthritis in Iranian population

Several genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have identified numerous susceptibility genes for risk of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Moreover, a bulk of the individual association studies in various populations has disclosed that genetics are significantly responsible for RA pathogenesis. CCR6 is a chemokine which is involved in the infiltration of inflammatory cells to sites of immune response. In this study, the association of CCR6 gene rs1854853 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) with susceptibility to RA was evaluated in an Iranian population. The investigated population comprised 250 RA patients and 500 healthy individuals. Real time TaqMan MGB-based PCR allelic discrimination approach was employed to genotype the samples with regard to the CCR6 gene rs1854853 SNP. Considering the A allele of rs1854853 SNP as reference, the G allele did not demonstrate a different prevalence between RA patients and controls (p= 0.17). Moreover, AG and GG genotypes were almost equally distributed between cases and controls (p= 0.61 and 0.14, respectively). Alternately, the dominant model of AG had no significant difference in frequency between the study groups (p= 0.36). However, genotypes did show a correlation with the clinicopathological specifications of RA patients. Results suggest that the CCR6 gene rs1854853 SNP is not involved in the genetic pathogenesis of RA in the Iranian population.