Detection of IL28B-rs12979860 Polymorphism and Estimation of IL28B Serum Level in Iraqi Hepatitis C Infected Patients

The genetic polymorphism of the IL-28B gene was determined at a position rs12979860 for 67 Iraqi Arabs hepatitis C infected patients and 53 controls. Testing for Hard- Weinberg (H-W) equilibrium revealed that HCV patients showed no significant variation in the distribution of IL-28B rs-12979860 genotypes (Pgreater than 0.05). Comparing patients with controls revealed that IL-28B rs-12979860 CC genotype was significantly decreased in hepatitis C patients (35.8 vs.56.6 %, P = 0.027), and the EF of such difference was 0.32. However, in terms of allele frequencies, the C alleles was significant decreased (59 vs.72.6 %, P= 0.03) in patients than controls, while allele T was significantly increased (41 vs.27.4 %, P=0.03) in patients compared to controls. Also, the heterozygous genotype CT and heterozygote genotype TT of IL-28B rs-12979860 have positively associated with HCV infection in Iraqi patients while the homozygote IL-28B rs-12979860 CC genotype have a significant negative association with HCV infection in Iraqi patients and protected against it. In this study serum level of IL-28B was not significantly decreased in HCV patients compared to control and IL-28B showed different serum levels in its three IL-28B rs-12979860 genotypes. The present study designed to determine the IL-28B gene polymorphism defined by real time PCR at a rs12979860 SNP in HCV Iraqi Arabs infected patients and its association with IL-28B level in serum due to its role in HCV infection clearance.