Correlation of TLR7 Gene Expression and Protein level with some immunological markers in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Patients

Abstract

Systemic lupus erythematosus is an autoimmune chronic immune dysregulation disease accompanied by the production of autoantibodies. Recent research has revealed that  TLR7 is among the main factors of SLE pathogenesis because it induces the activation of immune cells and triggers inflammatory cytokines. The aim of this proposed study is to assess the association between gene expression of TLR7 with serum levels of IL-39, IL-40, ANA and anti-dsDNA in patients with SLE in Iraqi females. This was conducted in a form of a case-control study whereby 70 SLE patients and 20 non-SLE cases were recruited. The levels of IL-39, IL-40, ANA, and anti-dsDNA were measured using ELISA whereas qRT-PCR was applied to measure the TLR7 gene expression. The findings demonstrated that there was a great rise in the expression of the TLR7 gene in SLE patients in comparison with controls (p value< 0.001). However, no significant difference was observed in the TLR7 protein content. Also, ANA and anti-dsDNA were significantly increased whereas IL-39, IL-40 were in a non-significantly increasing trend. There was a moderate positive correlation of TLR7 expression with these immune markers as revealed by Pearson correlation. The ROC curve analysis exhibited that there was a high diagnostic exactness concerning TLR7 gene expression. These results indicate that TLR7 could be one of the factors that cause the immune imbalance in SLE and could be a biomarker to monitor the disease.