Genetic variation in Micro-RNA genes of host genome affects clinical manifestation of symptomatic Human Cytomegalovirus infection

Abstract Background Micro-RNAs are implicated in various physiological and pathologic processes. In this study, we tested whether Micro-RNA gene variants of host-genome affect clinical manifestation of symptomatic HCMV infection. Methodology HCMV infection was detected by fluorescent PCR and immuno-histochemistry. The detection of genetic variants of four studied Micro-RNA tag-SNPs was done through PCR-RFLP assay and validated with DNA sequencing. Results We observed an increased risk ranged from 3-folds to 5-folds among symptomatic HCMV cases for mutant genotype of rs2910164 (crude OR = 3.11, p  = 0.009 and adjusted OR = 3.25, p  = 0.007), rs11614913 (crude OR = 3.20, p  = 0.006 and adjusted OR = 3.48, p  = 0.004) and rs3746444 (crude OR = 4.91, p  = 0.002 and adjusted OR = 5.28, p  = 0.002) tag-SNPs. Interestingly, all the tag-SNPs that were significant after multiple comparisons at a FDR of 5% in symptomatic HCMV cases remained significant even after bootstrap analysis, providing internal validation to these results. Multifactor Dimensionality Reduction (MDR) analysis revealed 5-folds increased risk for symptomatic HCMV cases under the four-factor model (rs2910164, rs2292832, rs11614913 and rs3746444). Conclusions These results suggest that Micro-RNA gene variants of host-genome may affect clinical manifestation of symptomatic HCMV infection.