Association of Ephrin receptor A3 gene polymorphism with susceptibility to chronic severe hepatitis B.
OBJECTIVE
Previous research has suggested that Ephrin receptor A3 (EphA3) plays signaling roles in the processes of inflammation by regulating lymphocyte migration and proliferation. In this study, we investigated whether the EphA3 gene polymorphism was associated with disease progression of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection.


METHODS
The EphA3 variant rs9310117 was genotyped in 1245 unrelated Han Chinese HBV carriers including 800 cases and 445 controls. χ(2)  test was used to examine the difference in allele frequencies and genotype distributions between groups. The association between the polymorphism and disease progression of HBV infection was conducted by unconditional logistic regression analysis.


RESULTS
Statistical analysis revealed that the genetic variant was significantly associated with the occurrence of chronic severe hepatitis B (CSHB). We observed that subjects bearing at least one T allele (C/T or T/T genotype) had a decreased susceptibility to chronic severe hepatitis B compared with those bearing C/C genotype (P = 0.003, odds ratio = 0.560; 95% confidence interval, 0.381-0.824, recessive model). Genotype C/T had also been confirmed to protect subjects from suffering chronic severe hepatitis B (P = 0.001, odds ratio = 0.498; 95% confidence interval, 0.330-0.752, additive model).


CONCLUSIONS
Our results suggest that the genetic alteration at EphA3 locus plays a role in the occurrence of chronic severe hepatitis B.
Institute of Liver Diseases, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
Hong
H
Yang
Xing-Xing
XX
He
Qi-Long
QL
Song
Man
M
Chen
Jin
J
Li
Meng-Yi
MY
Wang
Jin-Ling
JL
Yu
Jin-Jian
JJ
Yao
Li-Feng
LF
Liu
Ju-Sheng
JS
Lin