Serum Leptin Levels, Leptin Receptor Gene (LEPR) Polymorphism, and the Risk of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus in Kashmiri Population

Abstract

The study is conducted to evaluate relationship between LEPRQ223R (Gln > Arg) polymorphism, serum leptin levels, soluble leptin receptor (SOb-R) levels and SLE risk in Kashmiri population.LEPR genotyping was done by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) method in 100 unrelated SLE patients and equal number of healthy control subjects. Leptin and SOb-R levels were measured by ELISA assays. The present study showed higher frequency of variant genotype (AG + GG) in cases compared to controls [OR = 2.52, CI = 1.18–5.35, p = 0.03]. Moreover the rare (G) allele was significantly more predominant in cases than controls [OR = 1.49, p = 0.04]. Interestingly a positive association between the variant genotype and the development of arthritis [OR = 11.8, CI = 1.6–85.1, p = 0.002] and an inverse association with cardiac disorder [OR = 0.09, CI = 0.02–0.46, p = 0.001] was observed in this study. Furthermore the study showed significant differences of leptin levels in SLE patients and controls (23.9 ± 19.5 vs 14.8 ± 10.4, p < 0.001). SLE patients in the highest quartile leptin levels (≥32.5 ng/mL) were significantly more likely to have higher BMI (p = 0.001) and increased risk of developing arthritis (p = 0.02). Furthermore positive association was observed between the variant genotype(AG + GG) and leptin levels (p = 0.001) in SLE patients. Thus, it is evident from our study that LEPRQ223R polymorphism and elevated leptin levels are associated with increased susceptibility of SLE in Kashmiri population.

• Genotyping
• Kashmir valley
• leptin
• leptin receptor
• North India
• polymerase chain reaction
• systemic lupus erythematosus

Acknowledgements

We would like to sincerely thank patients and healthy blood donors for providing blood samples.

Authors Dil-Afroze and Adfar Yousuf have equally contributed to this paper.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.