FC gamma receptor polymorphisms in patients with immune thrombocytopenia

Introduction: Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is an autoimmune blood disease of unknown etiology. The aim of our study was to investigate a possible role of FCGR2A and FCGR3A polymorphisms in the development of primary ITP.

Methods: We analyzed 125 adult patients with ITP and 120 healthy controls. Genotyping was performed by using PCR-RFLP methods.

Results: Our results showed significantly higher frequency of high-affinity FCGR3A-158V allele in patients with ITP compared with control subjects (47.2% versus 37.5%; p?=?0.037). We did not find significant differences in the genotype distribution or allele frequencies for FCGR2A-131H/R between patients and controls, p?=?0.652 and p?=?0.478. In the groups of patients with unresponsive and responsive ITP we found significantly different genotype distribution and allele frequencies for FCGR3A, p?=?0.036 and p?=?0.008 respectively. There was no significant difference in genotype and allele frequencies for FCGR2A between these two groups of patients. Our results confirmed that the combination of high-affinity FCGR2A-131H and FCGR3A-158V allele was more common in patients with ITP than in controls (55% versus 40%; p?=?0.024).

Conclusion: Our results suggest possible role of FCGR3A polymorphism in the etiology, development and clinical outcome of ITP, but larger prospective studies are needed to confirm these results.