Tumor necrosis factor microsatellite polymorphisms in Italian glioblastomapatients

Tumor necrosis factor (TNF) genes map on the short arm of chromosome 6 and have been described to contain several polymorphic regions, the most inform ative of which are TNF alpha (13 alleles) and TNFb (8 alleles) microsatelli tes. We analyze TNFa and TNFb microsatellite polymorphisms in 58 Italian pa tients with glioblastoma (GBL) and 95 unrelated health! controls. At the TN Fb locus, M-e detected a statistically significant decrease in the TNFb4 al lele in GEL patients compared with the controls (P = 0.002; P-corr = 0.015) . Among the patients, 8 were homozygous TNFb4 (+/+), 23 were TNFb4 heterozy gous (+/-), and 27 were negative for TNFb4 (-/-). In a comparison with the controls, we detected a statistically significant difference (P = 0.017). I n fact, although no difference was detected in +/-, statistically significa nt differences rr ere detected both for an increase in -/- and for a decrea se in +/+ in the patient groups (P = 0.006 and P= 0.047, respectively). The se data suggest that TNFb4-negative individuals might preferentially develo p a Th2-type immune response that could lead to a reduction in antitumor ac tivity. (C) Elsevier Science Inc., 1999. All rights reserved.