Dear Editor, we read the publication from China on “Meta-analysis of the association of IL1-RN variable number of tandem repeats polymorphism with osteoarthritis risk” with a great interest (1). Xu et al. concluded that “IL1-RN VNTR polymorphism may increase the susceptibility to OA (1).” We would like to share ideas on this interesting report. First, the clinical association of IL and medical problem is widely mentioned. The effect on clinical phenotypic manifestation in IL1-RN variable number of tandem repeats polymorphism is explainable by molecular pathophysiology. As observed in other IL polymorphisms, the molecular change is resulted from genetic mutation and can further result in altered phenotypic expression (2). In IL1-RN variable number of tandem repeats polymorphism, a significant molecular change due to variation of the number of tandem repeats is detectable. However, in the present study, Xu et al. focused on single genetic polymorphism. There are also other possible genetic polymorphisms that possibly relate to OA risk. The good examples of those polymorphisms are IL17A, CD52, and CCL2 polymorphisms (3–6). Therefore, there should be further studies to cover other genetic polymorphisms that might be associated with OA risk.
Footnotes
Conflict of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Financial Disclosure: The authors declared that this study has received no financial support.
References
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