POLYMORPHISMS OF TUMOR-NECROSIS-FACTOR RECEPTOR-2 ARE NOT ASSOCIATED WITH INSULIN-DEPENDENT DIABETES-MELLITUS OR GRAVES-DISEASE

Insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) and Graves' disease (GD) ar e autoimmune endocrinopathies and associated with distinct KLA-DR and -DQ alleles as well as several tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) and beta (TNF-beta) alleles. TNF-alpha and TNF-beta interact with TNF receptor (TNF-R), of which two subtypes have been described: TNF-R1 a nd TNF-R2. We investigated TNF-R2 alleles in 90 patients with IDDM, 10 1 with GD and 70 healthy controls. Genomic DNA was amplified with spec ific flanking primers for the untranslated 3' region of TNF-R2. SSCP a nalysis revealed two alleles by different fragment patterns: TNF-R21 and TNF-R22. Patients with IDDM or Graves' disease and controls did n ot differ significantly: TNF-R21/*1:ILDDM(8%)/ GD(2%)/KO(4%); TNF-R2* 2/2:IDDM(34%)/GD(48%)/KO(42%), heterozygosity TNF-R2*1/*2:IDDM(58%)/G D(50%)/KO(54%) (IDDM vs KO: P=0.46, chi(2)=1.57; GD vs KO: P=0.59, chi (2)=1.05). In conclusion, the studied polymorphism of TNF-R2 was assoc iated with neither IDDM nor GD in a German population.