Association Of Chemokine CC Motif Receptor 3 (CCR3) Promoter Polymorphism With Aspirin-Intolerant Asthma (AIA)

Rationale 

The chemokine CC motif receptor 3 (CCR3) is a G-protein-coupled receptor with seven transmembrane-spanning regions and plays an important role in eosinophilic infiltration into the asthmatic airway. Chemokines, such as eotaxin, RANTES, and MCP, provoke an eosinophilic response via CCR3 in the peripheral blood and airway. There has been a report to suggest an association of CCR3 gene polymorphism with asthma, however little studies have been done in aspirin-intolerant asthma (AIA). The main objective of this study is to investigate the association of CCR3 gene polymorphisms in patients with aspirin intolerant asthma (AIA).

Methods 

The case control study was performed in three groups of patients, 130 AIA, 116 aspirin intolerant chronic urticaria (AICU) and 197 normal controls (NC). Four genetic polymorphism of CCR3 gene were genotype by a primer extension method, which was performed with the SNaPshot ddNTP primer extension kit (Applied Biosystems, CA, USA).

Results 

Among four SNPs, two promoter polymorphisms, −520T>G and −174C>T, showed a significant difference in genotype frequency between AIA and AICU; AIA patients showed significantly higher frequencies of rare genotypes of these polymorphisms when compared with AICU patients (p = 0.007 for −520T>G and p = 0.004 for −174C>T, multiple logistic regression analysis controlling for age and sex).

Conclusion 

This result suggests that two promoter polymorphisms of the CCR3 gene may be associated with the susceptibility of AIA in the Korean population.

∗This study was supported by a grant from the Korea Health 21 R&D Project of the Ministry of Health & Welfare, Republic of Korea (03-PJ10-PG13-GD01-0002 and A050571).