Association study of Toll-like receptor 5 (TLR5) and Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9) polymorphisms in systemic lupus erythematosus

OBJECTIVE: Toll-like receptors (TLR) play an important role in both adaptive and innate immunity. Variations in TLR genes have been shown to be associated with various infectious and inflammatory diseases. We investigated the association of TLR5 (Arg392Stop, rs5744168) and TLR9 (-1237T-->C, rs5743836) single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in Caucasian American subjects. METHODS: We performed a case-control association study and genotyped 409 Caucasian women with SLE and 509 Caucasian healthy female controls using TaqMan allelic discrimination (rs5744168) or polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis (rs5743836). RESULTS: None of the 2 TLR SNP showed a statistically significant association with SLE risk in our cohort. CONCLUSION: Our results do not indicate a major influence of these putative functional TLR SNP on the susceptibility to (or protection from) SLE.