Lack of Association of IL6 polymorphism with the susceptibility to Chagas disease in Latin American populations

The aim of the present study was to analyze IL6 rs1800795 genetic variant in the susceptibility to Trypanosoma cruzi infection and in the development of chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy (CCC), in five independent Latin American cohorts. A total of 3,087 individuals from Latin American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, and two cohorts from Colombia) were studied. In all cohorts, patients were classified as seropositive for T. cruzi antigens (n= 1,963) and seronegative (n= 1,124). Based on clinical evaluation, the seropositive patients, were classified as CCC (n= 900) and asymptomatic (n= 1,063). No statistically significant differences in the frequency of IL6 rs1800795 between seropositive and seronegative, or between CCC and asymptomatic patients, were found. Furthermore, after the meta-analysis no statistically significant differences were observed. Our results do not support a contribution of IL6 rs1800795 genetic variant in the susceptibility to the infection and the development of chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy in the studied populations.This research was supported by grants from Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología de Córdoba (GRFT 2017), Secretaría de Ciencia y Tecnología, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina and Red Iberoamericana de medicina genómica en enfermedad de Chagas - CYTED. Marialbert Acosta-Herrera was supported by Juan de la Cierva fellowship (IJC2018-035131-I). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript