Thiopurine S-methytransferase gene polymorphism in rheumatoid arthritis.

Background And Aims: Thiopurine S-methyltransferase (TPMT) is responsible for inactivation of thiopurine drugs which are commonly used in leukemia, organ transplantation and autoimmune diseases. The gene encoding TPMT is polymorphic, and both phenotyping and genotyping studies have shown ethnic variations in gene sequence and enzyme activity worldwide. The aim of this study is to identify the most common genetic polymorphisms of TPMT in healthy Jordanian volunteers and patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Methods: A polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) assay was used to identify the frequency of TPMT (*2, *3A, *3B, and *3C) polymorphisms in 250 healthy Jordanian volunteers and 110 RA patients.

Results: Only four healthy subjects (1.6%) and one RA patient (0.9%) with variant alleles were identified in this study. Two healthy subjects had the TPMT*3A allele and the other two had the TPMT*3B allele, whereas the one RA patient had the TPMT*3A allele. No homozygous polymorphisms were detected and all genotypes detected were heterozygous (*1/*3A) (*1/*3B). None of the subjects had TPMT*2 or TPMT*3C variant alleles.

Conclusions: Mutant alleles identified in this study have a low frequency. TPMT (*3A and *3B) were the only detected heterozygous alleles. No homozygous variant allele was detected. Further studies are necessary to identify other variant alleles that might uniquely occur in Jordanians.