Concerning the association of sepsis with allele and genotype frequencies, there were no significant differences in allele and genotype frequencies of the three polymorphic loci between all trauma patients and trauma patients with sepsis. There was a significant difference in the AA genotype frequency (P = 0.038) at position Paclitaxel cost -1082 between patients with and without sepsis. The frequency of the G allele was significantly higher in patients without sepsis than in those with sepsis (P = 0.037). No significant difference was observed between patients with and without sepsis for the allele and genotype frequencies of other two polymorphic loci (Table (Table3).3). With respect to the combination effect of the three SNPs, although there was a trend of increasing risk for sepsis incidence with the number of ATA haplotype (39.

4% for 0 ATA vs 54.4% for 2 ATA), no significant differences in MODS scores and sepsis morbidity rate were observed between any haplotype groups (Table (Table55).DiscussionThe aim of the present study was to estimate the clinical relevance of the IL-10 promoter polymorphisms in patients with major trauma. The described genotype and allele frequencies of the IL-10 polymorphisms studied in this cohort are quite similar to previously reported distributions in other studies in Chinese patients [18-20,25] and other Asian populations [30]. The minor alleles at positions -819 and -592 are the C allele in Asian populations [18-20,25,30], which is different to those seen in Western populations, being T and A alleles, respectively [22-24,26,31].

Although the minor allele at position -1082 is G in both Asian and Western populations, its frequency is quite different, over 40% in Western populations [21,22,26,31,32] and about 10% in Asian populations [19-21]. This leads to quite a difference in the common haplotypes between Asian and Western populations. Three common haplotypes in this cohort are ATA, ATC and ACA, respectively, while GCC, ATA and ACC are the common haplotypes in Western populations. The differences in allele prevalence might be due to ethnic difference [33].It has been shown that about 75% of the variation in IL-10 production is genetically determined [13]. IL-10 production appears to be controlled at the transcriptional level [34]. The -1082, -819 and -592 polymorphisms have been shown to affect promoter activity, showing that the ATA haplotype is associated with the lowest transcription activity [19].

Results from bioinformatics analysis indicates that base pair substitutions at positions -1082, -819 and Dacomitinib -592 might affect putative transcription factor binding, such as C/EBP beta, GATA-binding factor 2, Ets and STAT3 [35]. Given the functionality of the IL-10 promoter SNPs, we investigate whether these SNPs affect IL-10 production in response to a known stimulus such as LPS immediately after trauma.