Scientists in Singapore and China have discovered seven genes associated with increased susceptibility to leprosy.

The genes are:

• CCDC122
• C13orf31
• NOD2
• TNFSF15
• HLA-DR
• RIPK2
• LRRK2

The researchers, who analysed more than 10,000 DNA samples from leprosy patients and healthy people in China in the first genome-wide association study, had the results of their findings published in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine on 16^th December 2009. They said that their discovery highlights the important role that the innate immune response plays in the development of leprosy.

An immunologist from the Immunology and Immunogenetics of Department of Bacterial Infectious Diseases at Leiden University Medical Centre in The Netherlands, Dr H M Ottenhoff, said: “This is a very impressive study, which uncovers entirely new genes that control susceptibility to leprosy and perhaps also other related diseases. A great asset is that the study underpins the genetic data with plausible functional biological experimentation, which is not often seen.”

Dr Paul Saunderson, Medical Director of American Leprosy Missions and member of the ILEP Technical Commission, has made the following comment:

“My view is that although this is an undoubted advance in knowledge about leprosy susceptibility, the study also shows that it is extremely complex, with many different genes involved, each playing quite a small role. The use of what they call ‘ingenuity pathway analysis’ is very interesting, as it begins to look at how all the different susceptibility genes may be linked together to build up a susceptible phenotype. So this is a definite advance on the long road towards using genetic data to predict how someone will respond to infection with M leprae.”

See New England Journal of Medicine, N Engl J Med 2009; 361 Genomewide Association Study of Leprosy published on 16^th December 2009 via their website: www.nejm.org  

Categories: Technical information