The Effect of Toll-Like Receptor 2 Gene Polymorphism on Pediatric Pneumonia

Abstract

Background: To investigate the effect of Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) gene polymorphism on pediatric pneumonia.Methods: Overall, 80 patients with pediatric pneumonia (Observation group) treated in babil Children Hospital, Hillah from Sep 2019 to July 2020 were randomly enrolled. Meanwhile, 110 healthy children (Control group) in the same time period were randomly selected. PCR was applied to amplify the TLR2 (rs5743708) gene fragment. The TLR2 (rs5743708) polymorphism was detected, and the impacts of gene polymorphism difference on pediatric pneumonia were observed. Results: there was highly significant variation in genotype distribution (p < 0.001) in such a way that the heterozygous genotype R/Q and the homozygous genotype QQ were more frequent in patients group in comparison with control group in a significant manner (p <0.05). In terms of odds ratio (OR), the risk attributed to R/Q was 9.66 and that attributed to QQ was 3.02. On the other hand, the homozygous RR genotype was less frequent in patients group and can be regarded as a protective factor. Conclusion: TLR2 gene polymorphism might be related to the pediatric pneumonia and the population with Q allele at this locus may be more prone to pediatric pneumonia.