Endocrine Abstracts

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a common endocrine disease. Many factors can lead to the onset of T2DM, however, host genetic factors and environmental factors are the focus of discussion. The aim of this study is to investigate the putative correlation between the promoter polymorphisms of interleukin-4 (IL-4), one of the immune-regulatory type 2 helper T cell cytokines, and T2DM. Genomic DNA from 425 Taiwanese T2DM patients and 148 non-diabetic control study subjects were extracted, and their IL-4 promoter polymorphisms were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism. Both of the distribution of IL-4 C-589T (P=0.013) and C-34T (P=0.05) genotypes were significantly different between type 2 diabetic patients and control subjects. Significant association between IL-4 C-589T alleles (P=0.002) and T2DM, as well as C-34T alleles and T2DM (P=0.024), was also identified. Additionally, we found a statistically significant association between homologous IL-4 -589 C/C genotypes and lower circulatory high density lipoprotein (HDL-C) levels using multiple linear regression analysis with adjustment for subjects’ age, sex and diabetic status. Our results suggested that IL-4 promoter polymorphisms are associated with T2DM. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of the significant association between IL-4 promoter polymorphisms and type 2 diabetes mellitus as well as the IL-4 homologous C/C genotypes and the lower circulatory HDL-C level.