Ghorbanali Rahimian
Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences, Iran
Title: Mucosal IL-21 mRNA expression level is high in patients with H. pylori and is associated with the severity of gastritis
Biography
Biography: Ghorbanali Rahimian
Abstract
Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection is associated with gastritis and marked infiltration of the gastric mucosa by several cytokines secreting inflammatory cells. Different clinical forms of the infection may reflect distinctive patterns of cytokine expression. IL-17, IL-21, IL-22 and IL-23 have been reported to be involved in H. pylori-induced gastric mucosal inflammation but the details and relationship to different patterns of inflammation and virulence factors remain unclear. Therefore we examined IL-21 in the gastric mucosa of patients with H. pylori infection and evaluated the effects of virulence factors cagA and vacA allelic variants in H. pylori-infected on the mucosal IL-21 mRNA level in gastric mucosa. We also determined correlation between mucosal IL-21 mRNA levels and types of disease as well as grade of gastritis. Total RNA was extracted from gastric biopsies of 48 H. pylori-infected patients and 38 H. pylori-negative patients. Mucosal IL-21 mRNA expression level in H. pylori-infected and non-infected gastric biopsies was determined by real-time PCR. Presence of vacA (vacuolating cytotoxin A) and cagA (cytotoxin associated gene A) virulence factors were evaluated using PCR. IL-21 mRNA expression was significantly more in biopsies of H. pylori-infected patients compared to H. pylori-uninfected patients. There was no association between virulence factors and IL-21 mRNA expression. In conclusions, mucosal IL-21 expression level is increased in patients with H. pylori and is associated with the severity of gastritis. Therefore, we believe that IL-21 might be involved in the pathogenesis of H. pylori and might be an index of the severity of chronic gastritis.