3 A Study of Patients from the Southeast Region of Iran

8 Abstract—The impact of several environmental and genetic factors on diabetes and its complica-9 tions is well documented. It has also been established that cytokines play a key role in the regulation 10 of immune responses which have been shown to be important in the pathogenesis of diabetes. 11 Studies showed that single-nucleotide polymorphisms within the −592 region of interleukin-10 (IL-12 10) are associated with the regulation of expression. In this study, we aimed to find polymorphisms 13 of this region that may be associated to type 2 diabetic (T2D) patients with and without nephrop-14 athy. In this study, peripheral blood samples were collected from 100 T2D patients without nephr-15 opathy, 100 T2D patients with nephropathy, and 100 healthy controls. DNAwas extracted, and a 16 polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism technique was performed to 17 examine the polymorphisms within the −592 region of IL-10 gene. Our results showed a significant 18 difference between the genotypes and alleles of the −592 region of IL-10 in nephropathic and non-19 nephropathic patients in comparison to the healthy controls. The differences between the two patient 20 groups in relation to genotypes and alleles were not significant. Results of this study suggest that the 21 functional gene polymorphism of IL-10 reported here may play an important role in the pathoge-22 nesis of diabetes, but it seems that these polymorphisms do not have an effect on the nephropathic 23 complications of the disease