TNF-α promoter methylation and expression level in patients with palindromic rheumatism

Abstract

Palindromic rheumatism is characterized by recurrent and irregular attacks without fever, arthritis, or periarthritis that occur at indefinite intervals and last for hours to days. The disease progresses to other rheumatic diseases, especially rheumatoid arthritis. One of the important cytokines in inflammatory processes, which is known as proinflammatory cytokine, is tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α). Due to the unclear role of epigenetic factors in the pathogenesis of palindromic rheumatism, our goal is to study the effect of epigenetic factors on the expression of a number of genes affecting this disease. Materials and methods: After obtaining the ethical approval from the ethics committee of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, a cross-sectional study was performed on 15 patients diagnosed with palindromic rheumatism, 30 patients with rheumatoid arthritis and 30 healthy individuals as a control group. The patients' blood mononuclear cells were isolated by Ficoll and DNA and RNA samples were extracted according to the protocol of the kit manufacturer and then the gene expression was measured using real-time PCR technique and compared between study groups. Results: A total of 84 people participated in this study. 69.2% of patients with rheumatoid arthritis were female, while this rate was 33.3% in the palindromic rheumatism group. There were 20 female patients in the control group. Serum TNFα level in the rheumatoid arthritis group was 3.269 ± 1.442, in the palindromic rheumatism group was 3.825 ± 1.721 and in the control group was 2.927 ± 0.7654and there was significant difference between the TNFα level of the control group and patients with palindromic rheumatism.(p=0.0038).