Genetic association study of tumor necrosis factor-alpha with sepsis and septic shock in Thai pediatric patients

Objectives: To evaluate the association between the genetic polymorphism of the tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) gene and the development of sepsis and septic shock in Thai pediatric patients and to investigate the clinical impacts of TNF-α polymorphisms in this population. Methods: To perform this genetic association study, a prospective analysis of pediatric patients (age < 18 years) with clinical sepsis/septic shock was conducted. All clinical data were collected by pediatric intensive care experts, and genetic analyses were performed at a central laboratory. A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) located in the 5’-promoter region at position -308 was genotyped and the results were associated with clinical phenotypes. Results: A total of 167 Thai individuals were investigated, 66 of which were pediatric patients with sepsis/ septic shock and 101 were healthy controls. Interestingly, we could not identify an association between sepsis and -308 (G/A) polymorphism, which have previously been demonstrated to be a major SNP associated with sepsis in several Caucasian populations, since there was no frequency difference between cases and controls. Conclusions: In this report, the major TNF-α polymorphism (-308) was not associated with clinical sepsis/ septic shock in Thais. This information will be important for future analyses to identify the role of TNF-α as a genetic risk for the development of immunopathology underlying several diseases in Asia.