Background: The molecular basis of genetic predisposition to pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) in adults remains largely elusive. A chronic granulomatous inflammatory reaction is one of the main characteristics of the immune response to TB; however, a similar reaction is observed in other diseases, such as Crohn's disease.
Objective: To assess the association of genetic polymorphisms previously associated with Crohn's disease and PTB in a Colombian population of PTB patients and controls.
Design: A case-control study was performed among 500 newly diagnosed PTB patients and 320 healthy control subjects. Thirty-one single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) identified in a previous meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies of Crohn's disease were used for genotyping using MassARRAY technology.
Results: In this study, we identified an association with borderline significance (P = 0.0009433 and P = 0.029 after multiple testing by Bonferroni's correction) of SNP rs10995271 with PTB. SNP rs10995271 is in linkage disequilibrium with SNPs belonging to the zinc finger protein (ZNF365) gene.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that human PTB shares a genetic basis with Crohn's disease, and that SNPs in the ZNF365 gene would have a role in the occurrence of chronic granulomatous inflammatory reaction in TB as well as Crohn's disease.