Article

Increased expression and activation of IL-12-induced Stat4 signaling in the mucosa of ulcerative colitis patients.

Department of Gastroenterology, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, The Capital University of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100020, China.
Cellular Immunology (impact factor: 1.97). 09/2007; 248(2):115-20. DOI:10.1016/j.cellimm.2007.10.003 pp.115-20
Source: PubMed

ABSTRACT Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), including Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), are chronic inflammatory diseases with unsolved pathogenesis. Imbalanced Th1/Th2 may play a role in the sustained inflammation of IBD. In China, CD is rare but the incidence of UC has been rising steadily in the last two decades. We investigated the expression of IL-12 (p40) and IFN-gamma, and the activational state of Stat4 signaling in mucosal tissues at the site of disease from 30 active UC patients in comparison with 30 healthy controls. RT-PCR analyses revealed increased mRNA expression of IL-12 (p40) but not IFN-gamma in UC patients. Western blot analyses discovered, for the first time, increased levels of constitutive Stat4 in the cytoplasm and phosphorylated Stat4 in the nucleus of mucosal cells from UC patients. We conclude that a heightened, perhaps persistent, activational state of IL-12/Stat4, and/or IL-23/Stat4 signaling may be present in active Chinese UC patients, and possibly involved in chronic inflammation in UC.

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    Article: STAT4 gene influences genetic predisposition to ulcerative colitis but not Crohn's disease in the Spanish population: a replication study.
    Lina Marcela Diaz-Gallo, Rogelio J Palomino-Morales, María Gómez-García, Carlos Cardeña, Luis Rodrigo, Antonio Nieto, Guillermo Alcain, Ignacio Cueto, Miguel A López-Nevot, Javier Martin
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    ABSTRACT: Recently, the signal transducer and activator of transcription 4 (STAT4) gene has been associated with multiple autoimmune diseases. Interestingly, a recent work showed that the T allele of the rs7574865 STAT4 SNP was associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in a Spanish population. The aim of the present study was to reevaluate the role of the STAT4 rs7574865 polymorphism on IBD. The present case-control study included 498 Crohn's disease (CD) patients, 402 ulcerative colitis (UC) patients, and 1296 healthy matched controls. Genotyping was performed using a PCR system with a pre-developed TaqMan allelic discrimination assay for the rs7574865 STAT4 SNP. Moreover, a meta-analysis was performed with the previous work in a Spanish population and the current study, including a final sample size of 1574 IBD patients (820 with CD and 754 with UC) and 2012 healthy controls. No evidence of association was found for the current case-control study (CD: p = 0.23, OR = 0.9, 95% CI = 0.75-1.1; UC: p = 0.17, OR = 1.14, 95% CI = 0.95-1.38). However, the meta-analysis showed that the STAT4 rs7574865 T allele was significantly associated with susceptibility to UC (p = 0.012 pooled; OR = 1.20, 95% CI = 1.04-1.39) but not CD (p = 0.71 pooled; OR = 0.93, 95% CI = 0.65-1.34). Our data suggest that the rs7574865 STAT4 SNP is a genetic susceptibility variant for UC but not CD in the Spanish population.
    Human immunology 02/2010; 71(5):515-9. · 2.55 Impact Factor
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    Article: Evidence for STAT4 as a common autoimmune gene: rs7574865 is associated with colonic Crohn's disease and early disease onset.
    Jürgen Glas, Julia Seiderer, Melinda Nagy, Christoph Fries, Florian Beigel, Maria Weidinger, Simone Pfennig, Wolfram Klein, Jörg T Epplen, Peter Lohse, Matthias Folwaczny, Burkhard Göke, Thomas Ochsenkühn, Julia Diegelmann, Bertram Müller-Myhsok, Darina Roeske, Stephan Brand
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    ABSTRACT: Recent studies demonstrated an association of STAT4 variants with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA), indicating that multiple autoimmune diseases share common susceptibility genes. We therefore investigated the influence of STAT4 variants on the susceptibility and phenotype of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) in a large patient and control cohort. Genomic DNA from 2704 individuals of Caucasian origin including 857 patients with Crohn's disease (CD), 464 patients with ulcerative colitis (UC), and 1383 healthy, unrelated controls was analyzed for seven SNPs in the STAT4 gene (rs11889341, rs7574865, rs7568275, rs8179673, rs10181656, rs7582694, rs10174238). In addition, a detailed genotype-phenotype analysis was performed. Our analysis revealed an association of the STAT4 SNP rs7574865 with overall decreased susceptibility to CD (p = 0.047, OR 0.86 [95% CI 0.74-0.99]). However, compared to CD patients carrying the wild type genotype, the STAT4 SNP rs7574865 was significantly associated with early CD onset (p = 0.021) and colonic CD (p = 0.008; OR = 4.60, 95% CI 1.63-12.96). For two other STAT4 variants, there was a trend towards protection against CD susceptibility (rs7568275, p = 0.058, OR 0.86 [95% CI 0.74-1.00]; rs10174238, p = 0.057, OR 0.86 [95% CI 0.75-1.00]). In contrast, we did not observe any association with UC susceptibility. Evidence for weak gene-gene interaction of STAT4 with the IL23R SNP rs11209026 was lost after Bonferroni correction. Our results identified the STAT4 SNP rs7574865 as a disease-modifying gene variant in colonic CD. However, in contrast to SLE and RA, the effect of rs7574865 on CD susceptibility is only weak.
    PLoS ONE 01/2010; 5(4):e10373. · 4.09 Impact Factor
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Keywords

30 active UC patients
 
30 healthy controls
 
activational state
 
active Chinese UC patients
 
chronic inflammatory diseases
 
constitutive Stat4
 
Crohn's disease
 
IL-23/Stat4 signaling
 
Inflammatory bowel diseases
 
mRNA expression
 
mucosal cells
 
mucosal tissues
 
phosphorylated Stat4
 
RT-PCR analyses
 
Stat4 signaling
 
sustained inflammation
 
UC patients
 
ulcerative colitis
 
unsolved pathogenesis
 
Western blot analyses