Abstract

Brucellosis is the most common bacterial zoonotic infection. This pathogen may survive and sustain in host. The aim of this study is to define relationship between long noncoding (lnc) RNA-IFNG-AS1 and interferon gamma (IFN-gamma) in different groups of patients with brucellosis compared to control group. In this study, associations of lncRNA IFNG-AS1 expression with secretion of IFN-gamma level in Sixty patients with brucellosis, which were divided into 3 groups (acute, chronic and relapse groups), as a case group were compared with 20 subjects with negative serological tests and brucellosis clinical manifestation as a control group. In this regard, RNA were extracted from isolated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). LncRNA IFNG-AS1, T-box transcription factor (T-bet) and IFN-gamma expressions were detected using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). Serum level IFN-gamma was assessed using enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The results showed that expression level of LncRNA IFNG-AS1, T-bet and IFN-gamma increased significantly in all patient groups in compared to healthy subjects (P<0.0001, P<0.01, P<0.001). However, there was no significant difference in T-bet expression between chronic and healthy groups (P=0.98). Additionally, further analysis revealed that the serum level of IFN-gamma in acute and relapsed groups were higher than control group (P<0.0001, P<0.001). The effective role of IFNG-AS1 in many protective actions, including enhancing the expression of INF-gamma in the immune response of brucellosis patients, revealed new potential marker, LncRNA IFNG-AS1 in screening, diagnosis or treatment of brucellosis.