👤 Menha Swellam

HBsAg incidence in Egypt is at a range of 2 to 7%. Antiviral immunity is linked to interleukin-27 (IL27), a cytokine that is produced by two genes: EBI3 and p28. IL-27 gene SNPs can alter the susceptibility to infection of HVB by impacting the production and/or function of cytokines. The study aimed to examine the impact of the IL-27 SNPs on the progression of HBV infection among Egyptian individuals. This study included a total 112 patients infected with HBV, and 50 healthy individuals served as controls. The link between the IL-27 SNPs (rs181206 T/C and rs17855750 T/G) and HBV was investigated using real-time PCR. There was no significant correlation between fibrosis stages and the distribution of IL-27 rs181206 T/C and rs17855750 T/G genotypes among HBV patients. Results indicated minimal disparity in the distribution of haplotypes among the study groups. No significant difference in the frequency of the CG, CT, TT, TG, and haplotypes between the groups. This study found no correlation between the presence of IL-27 rs1812006 and IL-27 rs17855750 SNPs and the HBV chronicity. Show less

Cognitive impairment is a common and debilitating feature of multiple sclerosis (MS), and the dysregulation of synaptic plasticity is one of its direct causes. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been shown to play a role in synaptic plasticity, but their role in cognitive impairment in MS has not been fully explored. In this study, using quantitative real-time PCR, we examined the relative expression of two specific lncRNAs, BACE1-AS and BC200, in the serum of two cohorts of MS patients with and without cognitive impairment. Both lncRNAs were overexpressed in both cognitively impaired and non-cognitively impaired MS patients, with consistently higher levels in the cohort with cognitive impairment. We also found a strong positive correlation between the expression levels of these two lncRNAs. Notably, BACE1-AS was consistently higher in the remitting cases of both relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) and secondary progressive MS (SPMS) groups than in the respective relapse cases of the same subtype, with the SPMS-Remitting group of cognitively impaired MS patients showing the highest expression of BACE1-AS among all MS groups. Additionally, we observed that the primary progressive MS (PPMS) group had the highest expression of BC200 in both cohorts of MS. Furthermore, we developed a model called Neuro_Lnc-2, which showed better diagnostic performance than either BACE1-AS or BC200 alone in predicting MS. Our findings suggest that these two lncRNAs may have a significant impact on the pathogenesis of the progressive types of MS and on the cognitive function of the patients. Future research is required to confirm these findings. Show less