%0 Journal Article
%T MBL2 and Hepatitis C Virus Infection among Injection Drug Users
%A Elizabeth E Brown
%A Mingdong Zhang
%A Rebecca Zarin-Pass
%A Toralf Bernig
%A Fan-Chen Tseng
%A Nianqing Xiao
%A Meredith Yeager
%A Brian R Edlin
%A Stephen J Chanock
%A Thomas R O'Brien
%J BMC Infectious Diseases
%D 2008
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1471-2334-8-57
%X Participants were enrolled in the Urban Health Study of San Francisco Bay area injection drug users (IDU) during 1998 through 2000. Study subjects who had a positive test for HCV antibody were eligible for the current study. Participants who were positive for HCV RNA were frequency matched to those who were negative for HCV RNA on the basis of ethnicity and duration of IDU. Genotyping was performed for 15 single nucleotide polymorphisms in MBL2. Statistical analyses of European American and African American participants were conducted separately.The analysis included 198 study subjects who were positive for HCV antibody, but negative for HCV RNA, and 654 IDUs who were positive for both antibody and virus. There was no significant association between any of the genetic variants that cause MBL deficiency and the presence of HCV RNA. Unexpectedly, the MBL2 -289X promoter genotype, which causes MBL deficiency, was over-represented among European Americans who were HCV RNA negative (OR = 1.65, 95% CI 1.05¨C2.58), although not among the African Americans.This study found no association between genetic variants that cause MBL deficiency and the presence of HCV RNA. The observation that MBL2 -289X was associated with the absence of HCV RNA in European Americans requires validation.Mannose binding lectin (MBL) is an acute phase reactant that is secreted from the liver and is critical in host defenses against a spectrum of bacterial, fungal, viral, and parasitic pathogens. MBL directly mediates opsonophagocytosis and acvation of the C-type lectin complement pathway by binding microbial mannose and N-acetylglucosamine surface residues. MBL deficiency has been associated with a range of auto-immune and infectious diseases, including HIV-1 and hepatitis B viral infections [1-4].Low circulating levels of MBL have been associated with common genetic variants in the MBL2 gene, which is the only functional human gene for MBL. MBL2 is located on the long arm of chromosome 10 (10q11.2-
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/8/57